If You Were My Love
by latessitrice
Summary: Sometimes the universe has a cruel sense of humor. Darcy tends to be the butt of the joke.
1. Chapter 1

**Oh look, another Wintershock soulmark story! This one is NSFV* though.**

 **I was going to write this as a long one-shot but there was no way I was getting it finished today, so I'm giving it to you in pieces instead. Hopefully regular, quick-to-arrive pieces though. It's unbeta'd and although I've gone through it several times, let me know if you pick up any Britishisms or tense problems.**

 ***Not Safe For Valentine's**

* * *

 **1.**

Sometimes the universe has a cruel sense of humor. Darcy tends to be the butt of the joke.

For instance, she's never had unrealistic expectations about her soulmark. Other girls had fantasies about Captain America saying their words, even while he was still frozen, presumed dead. Darcy just hoped she'd get a nice guy who'd treat her well. Maybe that's the unrealistic expectation, given what her words say, but at least there's more chance of that happening than of her soulmate being a Disney prince.

So when Thor introduces her to Captain Rogers in the common room when she moves into the Avenger's new training and development facility, she expects to make friendly conversation, if he glances at her twice. He's a busy guy, she gets it.

But he's a polite guy too. "Steve, please," he says, holding out his hand to her and correcting Thor's introduction of him. His smile's warm and she returns it. "Thor's told me a lot of stories about his brave lightning-sister."

"When he's not yammering on about Jane, I bet," she replies, throwing a teasing smile at Thor. He doesn't have the grace to look abashed at Steve's acknowledging nod.

"So what's your role here, Darcy?" If he's not actually interested in the answer, she can't tell. This is why the guy's a leader: he can make the little people feel important. Even knowing that, she appreciates the attention.

"I'm assisting Maria Hill, but I also make sure that Jane remembers to function like a human being." She shrugs. "Old habits die hard."

"I hope Stark pays you for both," Steve replies, before calling over his shoulder. "Hill's in charge of ops, but she's not always based here, so we might seeing a lot of Darcy." His words are directed at his shadow, the man who just slunk through the door and froze when he saw Steve had company. Darcy recognizes him and offers a friendly smile, but responds to Steve.

"Can't complain," Darcy says, "not when he cleared my student loans and I get to work with his tech."

When the shadow makes no attempt to move, Thor carries on with his introductions. "Sergeant James Barnes, I'd like to introduce you to Miss Darcy Lewis, master of political science and computer wizardry, soon to be the Avenger's finest asset." She elbows him in the gut, which has as much effect as punching a marble statue. "I am sure you will find her to be a fine ally, just as she was to me in my darkest hour."

Barnes shuffles until he's almost shoulder-to-shoulder with Steve and gives her the once over. "You don't look like much of an asset."

Steve frowns, turning to berate Barnes for his rudeness. Darcy should be rankled by his words, but instead she's a little shellshocked. Her stomach has apparently just caught a ride on a jet plane, swooping high, and it takes her a moment to react. When she does, nobody seems to be expecting the giddy smile that spreads across her face. She doesn't put much thought into her next words, but hey, the universe already decided what they're meant to be, right?

"Hey, just because I don't have supersoldier juice, doesn't mean I can't hold my own."

She waits for the flicker of recognition on Barnes' face, but there's nothing. He doesn't even respond, just staring at her coolly. She knows she spoke out loud: she heard Thor's huff of amusement. But she repeats the words anyway, just in case Barnes didn't hear them.

Nothing. Just a raised eyebrow in response. Steve's brow has furrowed and when she glances at Thor, he's also staring at her in question.

"Never mind," she says, her voice barely above a whisper. The jet engine is crashing and burning, her stomach plummeting and taking her mood with it.

"I'm sorry, Darcy. Bucky is still adjusting to—"

"It's fine." Darcy cuts Steve's apology off. "And you probably shouldn't apologize for him when he's right there. He's not a child or a misbehaving puppy." She tries to keep her tone light and friendly, but Steve flinches at her admonishment. She notices Bucky's expression flicker, the vague annoyance at the world giving way to surprise. "Anyway, I've got things to be getting on with. Nice meeting you both."

Her wan parting smile to Thor does nothing to smooth his expression of concern, but she's out of there before he can say his own goodbyes and follow her. Sure, he can track her down in her quarters later, but she doesn't head for her quarters. She heads for the sanctuary of Jane's lab, or rather the space it's going to inhabit when they've finished moving everything in. Because, if she knows Jane, that is exactly where she'll be.

She's right. Jane is bent over a machine which still has stray beads of polystyrene scattered over its surface, tearing a strip of duct tape off the roll with her teeth.

"It's meant to be a day off, Janie," Darcy says in greeting. "You're supposed to be unpacking your quarters."

Jane lays the strip of tape wears she wants it. "I know, but I found a part of the spectrometer in one of the boxes, so I thought I might as well bring it here, and then when I was here I might as well put this thing together so…why does your face look like that?" She hasn't glanced at Darcy until that moment, but now she's unfolding herself from the machine, scurrying over to Darcy. "What's happened?"

Darcy throws herself into one of the chairs that has been unpacked, stilling the fingers absently rubbing against the soulmark on her hip. "I met my soulmate."

Jane lets out a squeak of delight, but her face falls a moment later. "Wait, why are we not happy?"

"Because he didn't react to my words at all."

"Oh." Jane looks like a kicked puppy. "That's not good."

"No. It's not." There are a number of possible scenarios here. Darcy has run through them all on her way to the lab. Some are more hopeful than others. "But maybe it's because of who he is."

"Who is he?"

"Barnes."

"Barnes…Bucky Barnes? Steve's friend, the ex-assassin, Barnes?"

"That's the guy."

Jane's chewing her lip. "Okay, we know he's been traumatized and he's still getting used to the world. We don't know what he remembers about how the world works beyond what Hydra had him doing. He might not realize the significance of someone saying his words. That's probably not the kind of thing that people have been focusing on getting him to remember, not yet."

"Yeah, that might be it." It was one of the more positive scenarios.

"But in time…"

"Mmm-hmm." Time. Yeah. Maybe.

Jane thinks for a moment, her gaze focused inward while she considers the problem. "We could ask Natasha."

"We could ask Natasha what?"

"She's been working with Steve and Barnes a lot. Maybe she knows what the situation is, with his words, and she can…dig if we need her to. She's good at that kind of thing."

They've met Natasha a few times, at Stark Tower and when Jane was scoping out the facility before she decided to move in. Natasha had encouraged the move, practically begged them to rescue her from testosterone poisoning. Even with Wanda Maximoff and Dr Cho in situ, there was still a hormone imbalance on site. Darcy also has an inkling Natasha was behind her promotion to Hill's assistant.

"Alright, I'll beep her, see if she's busy."

As it turns out, she isn't. She's in the lab ten minutes later, scrutinizing the feed of Darcy's introduction to Barnes on a Starkpad. The expression she pulls when she hears Darcy's words make Darcy flinch; it's the minutest quirk of her eyebrow, but Darcy suspects Natasha already knows what the problem is. She takes a few minutes to check an encrypted copy of a file, one Darcy averts her eyes from but not before she's glanced a list of James Barnes' identifying marks. Natasha is just confirming what she already knows at this point, because when she puts the pad away, her expression is mild but unsmiling. The kind you wear when you have bad news.

"I didn't say his words, did I?" Darcy says, pre-empting Natasha.

"No. I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I'd already figured it out." She attempts a smile, but her traitorous mouth refuses to cooperate, sinking into a pout instead.

"Darcy…" Jane places a sympathetic hand on her shoulder, and Darcy leans her head to rest her cheek on it.

"S'fine. I just need a distraction…we might as well get the rest of the lab set up. And drinks later?"

Natasha nods and rises. "I can introduce you to Wanda and a few other people I trust." She pauses. "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know yet, beyond getting blackout drunk tonight. Just—don't tell him, okay? He's got enough guilt going on without adding my little drama to the mix."

"I won't," Natasha promises. She casts Darcy one last glance as she leaves, and it's so full of pity that it hurts.

Working on putting the lab together should keep her mind busy, but it doesn't, not even when Jane is trying to keep up a stream of chatter to keep her distracted. But Jane has to shut up to concentrate on wiring things back together, and then Darcy's mind has full reign to pick over events, and what it means.

James Barnes is her soulmate.

Darcy Lewis is not James Barnes' soulmate.

He is going to be the love of her life; she is not going to be his.

Yeah, the universe's sense of humor is all kinds of fucked up.

Everyone knows stories like it. Hell, they make movies about people with mis-matching soulmarks. Tragic love stories, the kind Darcy hates. Either the couple has a relationship until the other person meets their real soulmate and abandons their lover, or the one in Darcy's position suffers unrequited love, watching as their soulmate finds happiness in someone else's arms. Nine times out of ten, the movies has them making a dramatic sacrifice to ensure their soulmate's happiness.

As much as the second scenario sucks, Darcy knows the former is out of the question. She understands how Barnes could be easy to fall in love with—she's seen the old footage from the war, of the charming guy with the dazzling smile, the one who wore his uniform so well. But there's no way she's setting herself up to be abandoned like that Keira Knightley character…

Darcy doesn't even realize she's sobbing into a circuitboard until Jane removes it from her hands.

"Come on," Jane murmurs, gently helping her stand. "I bet Nat has a stash of good vodka she wouldn't mind sharing—"


	2. Chapter 2

The next time Darcy sees Barnes, he doesn't look so broken, and she doesn't feel so broken.

She's managed to avoid him for an entire month, and mostly that wasn't even on purpose, she's just been so busy. Plus, since she's not an Avenger, she's got no business going to their common room, instead of the one used by the admin and lab staff. But at night, when everything's quiet, her head is anything but. She's planning for the future, for the pain to come, and plotting how to make the best of it.

He's been held captive by an evil organization and forced to do unspeakable things by them. He's a man trying to put his life back together and make amends for the things he's done. Darcy has read the reports, combed through the SHIELD files when they'd leaked online, had the safety briefing before she came to the new facility. He doesn't need the added complication of _her_. So she'll keep her distance and do her best to thwart destiny's plans.

He comes into her office with Steve to get some paperwork filled in. Normally they'd deal with Hill, but she's in DC. At least Darcy has forewarning; all of ten minutes to paste on her best professional smile and make it stick.

He's had a haircut, although the hair is still chin-length, but it's clean, and he's shaved recently. His clothes are casual, yet free of holes and frayed edges. His stance is still rigid, but he's lost some of that haunted tension from his eyes. He's well-fed and rested. Peace and quiet has done him good, as well as the extensive therapy Darcy knows he's receiving.

She shouldn't feel thankful that he's being taken of—he's nothing to her, not really _(not yet)_ —but knowing what he could (will) mean to her has made her a little protective towards him. She's already added Helen Cho to her list of ducklings alongside Jane and Erik, might as well add him too.

"Morning, gentlemen," she says, handing Steve the wad of paperwork and a pen.

"Darcy," Steve greets her with a nod. "We haven't seen you around much."

"You know how I said I couldn't complain about what Stark was paying me? Apparently, I was wrong. I'm hoping things calm down soon, before I meet myself coming backwards."

"I could talk to him—" he replies with concern, but she waves him off.

"I'm joking. I'm good, just busy. Barnes," she acknowledges with a head dip. He's watching her calmly, waiting for Steve to finish flicking through the papers. She notes the length of his eyelashes and gives herself a mental kick.

Steve provides his autograph and disappears, but Barnes lingers. Darcy doesn't realize until she glances up from the computer screen half a minute later and startles.

"Sorry," he mumbles.

"It's okay." She tries to paste her smile back on, like a protective shield, but she suspects she's showing a little too much teeth. She's worries that it'll come across like fear, but he doesn't seem to notice. "Can I help you?"

"I'd like to apologize for what I said to you when we were introduced. It was rude."

Ah. That's why Steve's made a subtle exit alone. "Did Steve put you up to this?" she asks gently. "I mean, I appreciate you doing so, but—"

"No. I realized after you left that I'd been rude. He knew I wanted to apologize though."

"It's fine. Apology accepted."

She thinks he'll leave, but he continues to linger, the seconds passing by.

"It was that word," he finally continues. "What Thor said. Asset," he manages, with a wince. "I don't like that word. It means…bad things to me."

"Oh." That's what he'd been known as for seventy years, of course the word has bad connotations for him. She makes a mental note to warn Thor about his choice of language in the future. "If you'd like, I can get that word phased out of our internal lingo."

He shakes his head. "That would be a lot of trouble to go to just because I don't like a word."

"Not at all. We've already made some changes to accommodate…other operatives." She skips over Wanda's name. It's personal information, after all. "We're trying to build a better organization here, and treating you like people is a big part of that."

For the first time, he smiles. It's hesitant, but it's a smile. "Then I'd appreciate it, if you can."

Darcy writes a post-it note to look up a synonym for asset, but he still doesn't leave. "Maybe you want to think about any other accommodations we can make for you," she offers. "I know Steve gave us a list before you arrived, but if there's anything else—"

"Did I upset you?" he asks. She stares at him blankly until he clarifies. "When you left that day, you seemed upset."

She pauses, enough for his face to ease its way into a frown, and that prompts her to answer him. "No," she replies, with a soft smile. "No, you didn't upset me."

"Oh. Good." He looks like he has more questions—let's face it, her behavior that day had been _weird_ —but her answer seems to mollify him enough. "Bye, Darcy."

Finally, he's gone, and she can drop the smile. It wasn't too bad. She's glad he seems to be in a better place than he was. Getting better all the time, probably. If his soulmate is lucky, he'll be in a solid place by the time they meet, all shiny and in full working order.

Darcy has misgivings about what her role in this is going to be, almost a premonition. Like that stupid movie where Rachel McAdams helped her war hero soulmate heal from his PTSD, before he flounced off with Kristen Stewart.

Like the universe is taunting her, that movie is showing on Starz over the weekend. She only catches a few frames of it while she's channel surfing, but it gets her thinking.

The only real way to avoid any contact with Barnes is to leave. They're in relatively close quarters, and knowing that she's destined to fall in love with him just makes it inevitable that she'll allow herself to do so, every time they meet. But this is her home. This is where her friends are—she's already drifted out of touch with everyone from high school and college. Hell, she's been with Jane and Thor so long she can't imagine being with them, though she always knew it was inevitable she'd move on one day. That was why the move to being Hill's assistant was important. It's still an assistant's position, but not only is it better paid, it has more responsibility. She'll gain transferable skills to pad out her resume.

So she'll stick around. Gain those skills. And when the time is right, say in a year, she'll look for an internal transfer, a position in another city. She could even request to work more closely with Hill, in NYC or DC. It's understandable that Darcy would get bored of the rural location of this facility.

A year. She can absolutely limit the amount she falls in love with Barnes in a year. Sure, she's going to be tragically alone for the rest of her life when she leaves, but if this isn't a sign to concentrate on her career, what is?

* * *

The base is eerily quiet for a Friday morning, with none of the usual undercurrent of background noise. Darcy knows exactly why—she did half the planning for the mission the Avengers are currently away on. She'd be in the ops room now, making sure it went off without a hitch, except Pepper Potts has raised concerns about the number of hours Darcy's been working and mandated she take a few rest days. Pepper takes employee health _very_ seriously. So Darcy has been relegated to the admin common room, since she's been banished from the labs too.

("Ms Potts has made it clear that taking care of Dr Foster is also considered work and not permitted," Friday had explained apologetically when her swipe card refused her access).

Since the Avengers are out kicking Hydra's ass, and the rest of the admin staff are being productive, Darcy is left with an empty kitchen to work in. She's got a kitchenette within her quarters, but the counter space is so limited it makes baking impractical. Today she's taking advantage of having the space to herself and all the equipment Stark Enterprises has provided. She's made a batch of honey and raisin flapjack—Thor's favorite—and is now working on whipping together cupcake mix. She's contemplating making two kinds: double chocolate, and vanilla with raspberry jam inside.

There's a noise from across the room. She only notices because of how quiet the space is compared to normal. When she turns her head, Barnes is in the doorway, watching her.

She freezes. Only for a second. Then she remembers it probably makes him anxious, probably makes him think that she's terrified of him, and it hurts her heart a little to think of it. So she forces herself to return to stirring the mix. It gives her a moment to collect herself before speaking.

"You okay?" she calls.

"Yeah. Sorry, I didn't want to sneak up on you. People don't like it."

She winces, but her hair hides her face from him. "I've kind of got used to it. Nat and Barton are constantly doing it to me. How come you aren't out with the others?"

He's reached the kitchen area and is staring down at the cooling flapjack. "I'm not ready for that yet. Soon, maybe, but…" He trails off with a shrug. "Thor told me you'd be around if I wanted company."

"Oh, okay." She glances down, letting her hair hide her expression from him again while she furiously mashes at a stubborn lump of butter. Thor knows about her situation and he is being infuriatingly positive about the whole thing. He thinks she should get to know Barnes and has apparently now taken to meddling.

Thor is _not_ getting any flapjack.

"I hope you enjoy baking then," she continues, "because that's what I'm doing today." It's not like she can turn him away.

"Do I get to lick the bowl clean?" he asks, and when she glances over, he's got a twinkle in his eye. "That was my only involvement in baking when I was a kid."

She rolls her eyes at him, ignoring the flock of ravenous butterflies which have taken up residence in her belly. "Listen, baking is a life skill. We're going to make a man out of you today."

She talks him through the principals as they work: this ingredient is for binding the mix together, this makes it rise, you fold gently to stop the air being beaten out of the mix, you do not try and put icing sugar in the mixer unless you want a mushroom cloud to swallow the kitchen. She shows him how to make buttercream the old fashioned way, with a bowl and wooden spoon, and since his left arm doesn't tire at the motion, he ends up making all of it. She lets him work his way through the tray of flapjack in reward. Because fuck Thor.

This is too easy, the rhythm between the two of them: he relaxes into her presence— _call me James_ —and listens to her attentively, watching as she shows him how to fill cupcake cases evenly. She coaxes him into telling her stories about helping his mother bake as a child, which mostly seem to involve him stealing the ingredients to snack on and getting a spanking for it.

"I made it up to her, eventually," he's saying as he watches her pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes. "Did extra shifts at the docks until I could afford to get her a big chocolate cake from the bakery for her birthday. She cried when I came home with it. Ma never really got anything for her birthdays, so it was worth it." He smiles at her, one of many he's gifted her with this afternoon.

And what a smile it is. She's never seen it at megabeam before, but the first time he unleashes it, she has to grip the counter to stop her knees buckling. She's pretty sure he knows it, too.

It's too hard not to watch when he licks the spoon clean of batter, staring at her unblinking through unfairly long lashes. It's too easy to retaliate by sucking her fingers clean of frosting. She understands, too, that for him this is new ground, that people are so on edge around him all the time, they forget to treat him like a human being with needs and a sense of humor. He's flexing new muscles, or maybe old muscles, slipping into the habits of the guy from the news reels. Flirting with him feels as natural as breathing.

Which is why she's so relieved when the Avengers swoop into the kitchen, alerted by Friday to the goodies awaiting them when they exited the Quinjet. Thor's the first to arrive, attempting to swoop Darcy into his arms, but she pushes him away.

"Dude, you need a shower. You've got blood on your clothes."

He grins, his good nature never faltering, even if his smile wavers when he sees the flapjack tray is empty except for crumbs.

She shrugs. "Sorry, James was hungry." Thor's eyes glimmer with delight when she calls him James, and she shoots him a look that has made lesser men cup their balls protectively.

He turns to James, who's exchanging a manly hug with a dirt-streaked Steve. "James! Did you keep fair Darcy company in our stead?"

"More like she put up with me annoying her," he replies, and Steve throws Darcy a smile of gratitude.

"It's nothing. He's a good student. One day he's going to be able to woo his soulmate with a mean brownie."

She doesn't even bother looking at Thor for his reaction that, but waves the Avengers off to their own common room, threatening to cut Barton off when he tries to sneak off with the stuff she kept back for the admin staff.

Thor seeks her later, when she's slumped on the sofa in her quarters with a straw in a bottle of wine. She contemplates ignoring him when she sees it's him on the other side of the door through the peephole, but she's got a piece of her mind to give him.

"You've got a nerve," she opens with. He slinks around her—an amazing skill for someone his size—and into her living room. He doesn't respond, but listens to her rant while he discards the straw and pours the wine into a glass. "I've made it perfectly clear what I think about the universe's plans for me. I do not need you aiding and abetting it! Do you _want_ to see me suffer?"

He holds the wine glass out to her, and when she ignores it in favor of keeping her arms folded in annoyance, deposits it on the counter. "Not at all. I want nothing more than to see you happy. Yet you seem determined to avoid it, and by extension, him."

"That way happiness does not lie, okay? Why the hell would I open myself up to inevitable heartbreak?"

"You deserve love, and having seen the pair of you together, I believe he is capable of loving you very much. Why would I not want to facilitate that?"

"Because I'll lose him!" The words are shrill even around the tight knot in her throat. It seems she's started crying. Her next words are muffled by Thor's chest, which she's suddenly pressed against. "And then I'll be alone, and it's not fair. I'm not a masochist, okay, I'm just trying to exercise a little self-preservation here." Thor gives good hugs, whatever his faults. He's rubbing her back soothingly even as she creates a wet patch on the front of his t-shirt.

"You are bound and determined that this will end poorly for you," Thor murmured. "We do not know for definite what the future holds. His soulmate may have long passed already. Perhaps it's up to you to fill that absence."

She shakes her head. "Nat says the words are still black." Not the faded gray of a soulmate lost, or the soft silver of a soulmate found (like hers). "They're still out there."

Thor sighs and it blows over her scalp. "No matter where it ends, I believe you will be good for the Sergeant, and he good for you. But I will not interfere further. And I will be here for you should you face the sorrow you fear."

"Thanks, big guy." She's all cried out and feels minutely better for it. "I'll make you a fresh batch of flapjack tomorrow, 'kay?"

He stays to watch crappy TV with her, since Jane is pulling an all-nighter in the lab, and tucks her into bed when the wine makes her sleepy. Yet when he's left she finds herself staring at the ceiling in the darkness, re-examining her plans for the future.

A year suddenly feels a lot longer than it did before.


	3. Chapter 3

**This is your last chapter for today (it's already past midnight for me).**

 **I forgot to mention - since this is already AU, we're ignoring the existence of Civil War. There was no grand falling out, Steve found Bucky and brought him to the Avengers who all decided to help him get better and accept him as part of the team. Just in case that wasn't clear.**

* * *

She's pretty sure James is following her.

He's suddenly always passing by the labs and her office, finding excuses to drop in and ask questions or pass on messages from Thor. It's taking it's toll because she never has the chance to prepare herself—he's just _there_ and her body reacts in a cacophony of conflicting emotions.

She forgets how handsome he is until she sees him, and despite his loose clothing it's easy to appreciate how toned he is. Her eyes want to devour him. Other parts want to cuddle him, perhaps tuck him into some blankets and feed him soup. The rational side of her wants to run and hide, knowing no good can come from this. It's always a split second of delight at catching sight of him, followed by the remembrance of why she really shouldn't want to be near him, her stomach never sure whether it should be soaring or plummeting.

He's definitely making an effort to catch up with her when Steve isn't around, turning up in the admin common room during the next two missions expectantly. She was meant to be working in the ops room until her shifts were switched, and she later finds out Steve arranged it with Pepper so James wouldn't be alone.

She teaches him how to make brownies and cinnamon rolls, Bakewell tart and cheesecake. He starts turning up with recipes he's found online, things his mother used to bake, and she doesn't have the heart to turn him away. He wants to learn how to cook properly, and then when he realizes she knows her way around technology, he begs her to bring him to speed.

"I've got holes in my memory where some of this stuff should be. The rest, I just missed out on. I gotta start to fill in the blanks."

He can navigate the web but he's worried he'll be a liability on missions with how advanced Stark tech is. She books him time in with someone else, a proper tutor, until Steve swings by her office and thanks her for spending time with James.

"He needs another friend, not just me," he says, and his expression is so earnest that she cancels the tutor, slotting time into her own calendar instead.

"Do you need tutoring too?" she asks Steve, desperately hoping she can use him as a buffer.

"No, I'm good. SHIELD spent a lot of time working with me, and I have a two year head start. Besides, Bucky was always better with technology. I think it frustrates him that he's so far behind."

Natasha is waiting outside her quarters when Darcy retreats there that night. "I can get them to back off, if you want me too. There are other people Barnes can spend time with."

Darcy thinks about his hopeful expression when she'd agreed to give him computer lessons. "Thanks, but I don't think there's a way to do that without hurting his feelings. And that's the last thing I want to do." Despite his reputation and his ability to loom silently, James mostly reminds her of a lost puppy, one which is always expecting to get kicked.

"I can be subtle."

"I know you can." She flinches under Nat's steady stare. "I'm not trying to be a martyr, okay?"

"You could tell him. He'll back off then."

"Absolutely not. He's in a good place right now, getting better everyday. He doesn't need someone else's drama messing with his head."

Nat concedes and leaves, but not before fixing Darcy with a look she's pretty sure means _It's already too late for you._

She meets James the next day for his tutoring session. She hasn't prepared anything in particular, not sure where to start, so she's decided to let him figure out what he wants to learn first. He arrives in her office with a latte in hand.

"I asked around and apparently these are your favorite," he says, holding it out for her. He doesn't have one of his own, which means he went to the on-site Starkbucks just for her.

"Oh! You didn't have to—"

"I wanted to. You don't have to help me."

"Technically, I'm getting paid for this. I'm still on the clock, and you can bet that if I wasn't Steve would ask Pepper to."

"I know. But this is what people do nowadays, right?"

She decides to stop being a curmudgeon and take the coffee from him. "Thank you. Do you want to take a seat?"

He grabs the spare office chair and pulls up beside her, but she barely has a chance to adjust before someone enters the office with an urgent request. Fifteen minutes later, and they've made no progress at all. She keeps getting interrupted, despite the fact that her calendar shows her as unavailable.

"Come on, let's go somewhere else," she says, grabbing the cooling latte and powering the desktop down. "Friday, is the computer lab free?"

"Unfortunately, it is full at the moment," the AI responds.

Darcy thinks for a moment, and comes to a halt in the vestibule at the end of the corridor. They can take the stairs or the elevator, but where to is the question. "My place or yours?" she asks James. "I don't know what you have, but I've got one of everything Tony would let me take. Starkpad, Starkbook, StarkTV…you get the picture."

"Your place," James suggests hesitantly. "I don't think I've got any of that stuff. I'm not even sure what it is."

She calls the elevator and realizes he's got his arms wrapped around himself. She might not be a body language expert, but she recognizes that's not good. "We don't have to, if you don't want. We can go learn how roast a chicken in the kitchen instead, and try for a time when the lab's empty."

"No, it's just…you trust me. Being alone with me? I don't know if—"

"Oh." The elevator arrives and she steps inside. "When was the last time you," she waves her hands while she searches for the right word, "slipped?"

"Three weeks ago. An agent I didn't know got too close to me in the corridor. Steve had to pull me off him."

She presses the button to hold the elevator doors. "So you saw him as a threat, right?" James nods. "Do you see me as a threat?"

He gives her the once over, but when he replies his attitude is cockier than it has been during the entire conversation. "Pretty sure we established not the first time we met."

Darcy huffs, feeling her cheeks color, but not for the reasons he probably thinks. He's reminding her of the words on her hip, of how she'd found them freshly turned quicksilver when she'd showered the morning after he said them. Of how she sees them every time she undresses, and how he has no idea what they mean to her. "Alright then. I don't think we're going to have any problems."

He nods and follows her into the elevator, then trails her (like a puppy) to her quarters. She's glad for the daily cleaning service and for the fact that she didn't leave her bra discarded on the couch when she got home last night and removed it. Instead, the living room is respectably tidy.

She dumps her purse on the coffee table and gestures for James to sit down. He takes a seat gingerly, right on the edge of the cushions like he's ready to bolt at any moment. He probably is. On the other hand, he seems to be taking in every detail of the room. It's pretty basic, a white box furnished by IKEA, but she's done her best to stamp some personality on it, even if that personality is drunk-diving for ideas on Pinterest.

"Where did you want to start?" she asks.

He drags his gaze away from a set of ombre-painted candlesticks to focus on her. "I'm not sure."

"What do you think you'll use most?"

He ponders the question. "Everyone spends a lot of time on their phones. I can make calls, but that's about it."

She grabs her Starkphone. "How about I give you an overview of the different devices and then we can concentrate on how to use touchscreens properly. That's something you'll use on a whole spectrum of things."

One hour later, James knows how to use emojis and what rickrolling is, among other things. Darcy thinks teaching him is going to involve endless questions leading to new questions, but that at least reminds her to tell him about Wikipedia.

"Can I have your number?" he asks. Whether he picks up on her moment of hesitation or not, he tacks on "To practice."

"Sure." She takes his Starkphone and programs in her number, then hands it back to him. Ten seconds later, she's got a message containing a smiley face wearing shades, and a flower.

He's a fast learner.

She saves his number and replies with a thumbs up.

They agree to meet at the same time the next week, and when he's stood on her threshold, he turns to her. Reaches out with his arm and she swears he's going to hug her, but something about her body language makes him stop. He drops the arm, a flash of sadness crossing his face, but she resists the urge to initiate a hug of her own. There are lines she does not want to cross. She waves him goodbye, closes the door, and drops her head against it.

Having him here was a line she shouldn't have crossed.

His presence lingers in the room, especially the citrusy-clean scent of whatever he showers with. That should disappear after the cleaner's been in tomorrow, but it's going to reappear every time he comes here. She needs to find a new location for their lessons. She needs to make it more professional. She needs to put barriers up.

It's easier said than done. The messages start as a trickle, James testing his new skills with one of the few people he can. He even goes so far to rickroll her, and she should have seen that coming. He sends her links from Wikipedia and the source links she taught him to follow, things about his formative years but also things that are new to him which tickle him. Apparently Nat (the troll) has introduced him to the Eurovision Song Contest and he goes on a bender of articles and YouTube videos. He's also discovered the archive of Captain America promos featuring Steve. It's all accompanied by emojis— _puppy_ emojis—and soon the trickle is a torrent. He seems to be texting her whatever's on his mind.

Like a friend.

She replies. Of course she replies, even if it's just a smiley face, but sometimes she'll be genuinely interested and they'll strike up a short conversation.

She doesn't find a better location by the next session, so she tells him to come over to her quarters again. James is far less hesitant this time, relaxing into the sofa cushions after handing her another latte.

"Can we learn how to use the StarkTV today?" he asks, gesturing at her set. "We know how to use ours to watch stuff, but apparently you can access YouTube and other things through it too."

"Sure, it should be fairly simple. You've obviously got the hang of YouTube and Wikipedia on your phone."

"And a normal computer too. I've been using the desktop a lot. I think once we've gone over how to use the TV, we can start covering more technical things? I've seen Steve using a command shell—is that right?"

"That might be a bit of leap, but we can build up to it."

She shows him how to use the internet-ready TV and he's surprised at how simple it is, a matter of pressing the right buttons. Though she starts at the other end of the sofa, he shuffles closer as they talk to get a better view of the remote she wields. They end up with their thighs brushing, and James doesn't move away when the conversation turns to operating systems. He's mostly following it, but something tells Darcy he'd be happier taking the base unit apart and examining the pieces.

"You know, I really don't think you need to be able to do anything that technical," she says gently. "Every team member has their strengths and their particular roles in a mission. You wouldn't be sent out there without someone who's covering the computer stuff, and you're not the only person who doesn't use it much. Hell, Wanda's more likely to fry tech than try to use it."

He doesn't look convinced. "I think I'd feel more connected to everything if I understand what's going on around me. Plus, even the weapons nowadays have all this fancy gadgetry on them."

"So get Stark to build you something simple, something that suits you. If that's what you want to do."

"What do you mean?"

"You know that you don't have to go out on missions at all, right? There is no obligation for you to become an Avenger." She's been included in briefings with Steve present where this has been discussed. Steve has expressed concerns that maybe James feels like he has to give something back after all that they've done for him.

"I know. I want to." His expression is suddenly fierce. "At least until Hydra is wiped off the face of the Earth."

"Fair enough. I can understand that." And she can. She's only knows a limited amount about what was done to him, but it's enough to make her want Hydra wiped off the face of the Earth too, regardless of their other crimes.

"Sam says I'm ready to. I just need to get my therapist to sign off on it."

"But you'll keep going to therapy?"

He snorts. "I'm going to be getting treatment of one kind or another for the rest of my life, that much I know." He checks the time on his phone. "Are you coming to dinner?"

She glances at the time herself and curses. It's way later than their last session ran. "It's okay, I've got a frozen lasagna ready to go. I don't trust cafeteria food." Bad memories of high school food linger.

"I mean to dinner with the team." The team in question being the Avengers. They have their own dining suite and team meals, as schedules permit. She knows it's Steve's doing to maintain bonds within the group. "I've started going and the food's good."

"I'm not a team member," she points out.

"But you're Thor's lightning-sister," he protests. "Other people come too—Jane and Pepper and Helen."

"I'm neither a scientist or a significant other. I wouldn't feel comfortable." She's making excuses and she knows it, but she really would feel uncomfortable without a concrete invitation from someone with authority. He frowns when she says 'significant other', but lets it drop. "Same time next week?"

"Maybe we could stop having formal arrangements, and I come to you when I have a question? I don't mean come and find you right away," he corrects hurriedly, "I know you have a lot of work to do. But I can make a note of anything I want to know and text you. You can reply when you're free, or come see me, or I'll come see you…"

"Sure," she agrees brightly. He's trying to see more of her, and it makes her want to cry. Instead, she's seeing this as a way of extricating herself from this precarious situation. She can let their contact gradually trickle off, and he'll be so busy with the team he won't notice.

Steve's in her office the next morning and he's practically glowing with happiness. "Bucky's come along leaps and bounds," he says, and she knows he thinks it's her doing. The sense of impending doom ratchets up a notch. "I never thought he'd attend the team dinners, or talk to people if he did, but it's like I've got the old Bucky back. I wish he was telling less stories about me, but I guess I can't have everything."

"Sam's birthday's coming up. I can schedule an awesome gift for him," she suggests, trying to subvert the conversation. "Talk to Stark about bonuses for the doctors too…"

"It's not just them. Bucky's real taken with you. I can't thank you for all the time you've spent with him. It means a lot—to both of us."

She mumbles a grudging thank you, but he mistakes her reticence for humility.

"And I can't believe no one's invited you to dinner before," he continues, and she sinks into her chair a little more. Of course James spoke to him about that. "We'd love to have you there. Tonight?"

She wants to make some excuse about working, but she knows Steve will take it up with Pepper. She might even get found out as a liar, and she _cannot_ be caught lying to Captain America.

"I'll be there," she agrees with a forced smile. She's considering taking acting classes and moving to Hollywood at this point, because Steve doesn't notice how fake it is even though he's staring right at her.

"Excellent. There is something else I wanted to talk to you about." His glow has diminished a little, his friendly demeanor turning more serious and professional. Oh, she's speaking to the captain now. "Bucky's going to start coming on missions soon."

"He mentioned it."

"I need someone in ops to cover him. He's seasoned, but he's a special case. If I ask Hill to assign someone to pay him special attention during planning and the missions, she'll question whether he's really ready to go out there, but I thought if I came direct to you…"

"You didn't even have to ask."

He really didn't. She's already started wondering how she could ease James into this first mission, and assigning herself as handler would work. The team are on a big push to go after Rumlow, but no one is sure if he has codewords to trip James' programming which aren't in the file.

"You're on it?"

She holds up her To Do list and shows him the freshly-added item at the bottom. _Barnes' first mission - extra support_. She'd lain awake last night worrying about it.

The captain melts away as Steve breaths a sigh of relief. "It's appreciated. See you tonight."

After he leaves, she stares down at the list while a wave of dismay washes over her. Seeing less of James is looking less and less likely, and she's only kidding herself if she thinks she's going to take any real steps to put space between them.

She might as well face it. She's already started falling for him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Only one chapter today, but hey, I've written 10,000 words in three days. It's a personal record. I'm at work the rest of the week so chapters will be a little slower to arrive.**

 **(unless of course you're reading this at some point in the future. Hi!)**

* * *

Darcy has to make a detour to the lab before dinner to retrieve Jane. Helen's already left: the doctor has a healthy respect for regular meals and sleep which Darcy wishes would rub off on her friend.

At least this way, she doesn't enter the dining suite on her own. It's not at full capacity, since some of the team are away on reconnaissance, and Darcy's pleased to find that she knows most of the people in the room. That's good. Regardless of her friendships and acquaintances with some of the Avengers, it would still freak her out to suddenly be confronted with all of them.

Jane takes a seat next to Thor, leaving the one on his other side free. James is waiting expectantly next to the empty space. He rises to pull the chair out when she approaches and she thanks him, feeling her cheeks color as everybody swivels to watch it happen.

"You are making me ashamed of my own lack of manners, Sergeant Barnes," Thor announces loudly, and turns to Jane. "Apologies, my lady. I will endeavor to do better."

Jane rolls her eyes. "Don't you dare."

Steve leans across to James and whispers. "People don't do that anymore."

"That's one of the things the twenty-first century is wrong about," James rebuts, but he turns to Darcy anyway. "Sorry if I embarrassed you."

She waves it away like it's no big deal. At least everyone's attention has moved on, distracted by the arrival of the food, which is piled into the center of the table.

"You look nice," he continues.

"I felt like a had to make an effort." It's only a pantsuit, but Darcy usually pushes the boundaries of the smart-casual dress code to the extremities of casual.

"Not at all," Steve says. "The only rule is we aren't allowed to turn up in tac or training gear. Thanks for coming." His gaze is flicking between herself and James, and he seems to coming to some kind of conclusion. A conclusion that results in a small, content smile.

"I was promised good food," she says. Steve indicates she should help herself, and she starts heaping food her plate. The center of the table spins like a vast Lazy Susan, and everyone gets to select what and how much they want. She suppose it makes sense, given the amount some of the guys are piling onto their plates. She selects steamed veggies, pasta and grilled chicken. It's a definite step up from microwaved lasagna.

She concentrates on eating rather than partaking in the conversation. Steve leads it at first, until Sam cuts in.

"How many times do I have to tell y'all no shop talk at the table?"

"If Stark had got an advance copy of the next Game of Thrones series like he promised, we could talk about that," says Helen. "But no, he has to get into an argument with the producers."

"That's the show with the dragons, is it not?" Thor asks. "I find it rather slow-paced and the dragons underused."

He launches into a tale about the time he faced a nest of dragons on the edge of the forest— _"Fire and lightning are a terrible combination. It took centuries for the trees to regain their maturity after we replanted them"_ —which somehow sparks a story from James about Steve in the middle of Nazi-occupied Europe, taking a Hydra cell down.

"So I take the guy out and save Steve's skin, when he turns around and goddamn salutes right at me. He might as well have sent up a flare announcing my position. I got out of there real quick, but I had a few words for him later about not giving your sniper's location away to the enemy."

Steve hangs his head while everyone laughs. "In my defense, they were making a propaganda film and the director told me to do that."

"See, he likes to pretend he hated the limelight, but he loved it really." James is relaxed in his chair, one hand still gripping his fork to spear food with, the other arm casually leaning on the back of his chair, his hand resting on the back of Darcy's. She doesn't miss Thor's questioning look at the pose.

Jane decides it's sharing-stories-about-stupid-things-they've-done time, and tells them about Darcy tossing the car keys into an inter-dimensional portal.

"I didn't know that's what it was!" she protests. "And at least I didn't throw _myself_ into the portal."

"Neither did I!"

Which leads them to retelling the story with the aether—Jane's constantly correcting Darcy with the proper scientific terms for the phenomena and equipment they'd used to defeat Malekith. Luckily Jane's version of the story doesn't involve the kiss with Ian, since she wasn't around to witness it.

"But hey, us puny mortals saved the world," Darcy says. "With a little help from the big guy." She pokes Thor in the bicep.

"You are too kind-hearted," Thor replies with a twinkle in his eye, and proceeds to regale the group with the story of Darcy rescuing the animals from the pet store while the Destroyer ravaged Puente Antiguo. It makes Steve's smile that much more contented.

When their plates are cleared, James offers to walk her back to her quarters, but Thor swoops in. "I have a matter I wish to discuss with Darcy." Darcy says goodbye to James and Steve, then follows Thor on the route back to her rooms.

"He is quite taken with you," Thor says when they've put some distance between themselves and any eager ears.

She sighs. "I know." She'd be an idiot not to see the signs.

"And you with him."

This time she just sighs.

"It has occurred to me now, why destiny would be so eager to bring the pair of you together. You are a natural care-giver. It's why you remained with Jane instead of completing your studies. It's why you put your own life in danger to rescue those animals. All the universe had to do was place James Barnes in your path, and you would want to care for him."

"Thanks, buddy. I already figured that one out."

"Now I feel guilty. If it weren't for my interfering—"

"We'd have crossed paths one way or the other. You can't escape destiny, that's what the stories all say."

"You could leave."

"Except I'm needed, aren't I?" They're outside her door and she reaches up to pat Thor on the arm. "I appreciate the concern, but I've already spent many, many hours brooding over the whole thing. When I'm sure Janie's new assistants are licked into shape and can cope without me, when I have someplace worth going to, I'll be out of here. In the meantime, can you make my excuses at dinner? I'll drop by occasionally but I want to try and keep my distance. Oh, and stop Steve becoming an enabler, please? I know he's getting ideas and it has to stop before it starts."

"He just wants his friend to be happy."

"Me too, big guy. Me too."

* * *

Keeping her distance involves only going to dinner once a week, and having Thor ensure she's sat between Jane and Helen. It involves her responding to James' text queries with _"Sorry, kinda busy. Maybe you could ask Nat?"_ It involves her thanking him when he turns up with latte but fabricating meetings she has to attend.

She tries to soften it, she really does. She doesn't want to see the kicked puppy expression. So she still responds to some texts, and talks to him during dinner even if she's not sat next to him. She thanks him for the coffee and talks to him about the political scene, because he's all caught up on the present situation and wants to discuss his thoughts with her.

Keeping her distance also involves spending a lot of her working day making plans around him. She's successfully got herself installed as his personal mission handler—Steve knows, since he signed off on it, though she doubts James does—and is observing him training in the countdown to said mission.

She doesn't know what Thor said to Steve, but the next time she sees him after dinner his attitude towards her is distinctly colder. It's only when he realizes the lengths she's going to to protect James that he warms to her again.

There are four days of intense planning, four days where she barely sees Jane because Rumlow's been spotted in Detroit. They want to move quickly, but they have to verify the sighting before moving. There's no point wasting manpower, especially since it's not the first time they think he's used a decoy to cover his real movements.

They receive confirmation from the field operative at 5pm. Hill gives the go command a half hour later. She tries to insist that Darcy sit this one out, that this could go all night and she's already been working all day. Darcy refuse and gets Steve to pull rank, which is probably not the best thing she can do if she values career progression. She grabs a nap while the team assembles and travels, arriving in mission control with a stack of energy drinks that would probably even give Jane pause.

Her role is pretty simple. She only needs to monitor what's happening and alert the team to upcoming complications: she has a bank of screens at her station to keep track of events. The central one is a map of the area overlaid with blinking dots pinpointing the location of each team member, equipment like the Quinjet, and the location of any surveillance cameras in the area. She can switch between the feeds of the cameras to watch what's going on. She's also got a headset to relay messages to them if she needs to, but it's on mute right now. She'll only need to speak up if she spots a problem.

James' tracking dot is a different color to everyone else on her system. They're all red, he's blue. At first, the dots are clustered together, still on the Quinjet which has touched down on the roof of a warehouse three blocks over from Rumlow's supposed safe house. Then they split up, most of them heading towards the safe house, looking to surround it and block the exits.

James is a sniper. He seeks the high ground, just like Barton. The two of them are going to try and cover the exits between them and have chosen vantage points to reflect that. She switches cameras to track his movements, keeping a careful eye on the streets around him too. He's alone and a potential ambush target, though help wouldn't be far if that happened.

She watches him move over grainy feeds, his black tac gear helping him blend into the dark streets, even his metal arm covered. There's power in the way he moves, despite the implicit grace as he pivots and swivels while he checks his surroundings before proceeding. From this angle, with the way he's gripping his rifle, the width of his shoulders is emphasized. She realizes that on base he makes an effort to appear smaller, especially around her, slouching so he doesn't overwhelm her with his size. There's none of that here. He's using his body the way it's been honed to be used.

Darcy is suddenly very aware of her libido flexing, unfurling and making its interest known. She always known he's a good-looking man, but before now it's been her heart which clenches at the sight of him. Now, there's a new element at play, a fresh draw as she watches his powerful thighs propel him up a fire escape to the rooftop.

She shakes her head and pushes it aside. Now is the not the time to be noticing these things.

There's no surveillance on the rooftop, so she keeps watch on the access points, making sure he's up there alone, and finds the one feed which gives her sight of him. It's blurry, and really she sees more rifle muzzle than man, but it's the best she can do. Satisfied, she turns her focus to how the rest of the mission is going.

Adrenaline (and okay, a lot of caffeine) takes over, carrying her through the next few hours. It's textbook: the safe house inhabitants had no idea they were coming. No one evades the team, the ones who try to escape being captured or taken out by James or Barton. The rest of the team sweep the building, gutting it until they've rounded every last Hydra agent up. There's no sign of Rumlow.

Darcy makes sure James makes it back to the Quinjet, monitoring the feeds until it takes off, bringing him back to the facility. Hill calls mission complete and everyone within the control room exchanges high fives. There's processing to be done when the prisoners arrive, but Hill tells her to head to bed and take the day off.

Maybe it's the caffeine, but it takes a long time to get to sleep. Maybe she's got the way he moved burned into her mind's eyes and blaming caffeine is unfair.

* * *

Keeping her distance works better if he doesn't turn up at her door the next evening looking _exactly_ like puppy she once saw in an ASPCA commercial. She's pretty sure Sarah McLachlan should be the soundtrack to this moment, with a soft voiceover explaining how badly mistreated James has been.

His hands are in his pockets, and he's doing the slouching thing. Now that she's noticed it, she can't unsee it.

"The mission went well," he starts, and she knows that's not what he's here to talk about.

"Congrats," she replies, waving him into the living room. "But I know, I was in mission control."

He hovers near the kitchenette rather than taking a seat, and there's a smudge of black at the corner of one eye she wants to wipe away. It's probably the paint he wears to keep his face camouflaged and hidden from enemy fire. "You weren't there when we got back."

"Hill draws the line at eighteen hour shifts. Pepper gives her hell for it."

"You haven't been around much at all." His tone isn't accusatory at all. It's hurt.

Darcy has not had enough sleep to deal with this. She runs a hand through her hair, wondering if she remembered to comb it after she tossed and turned all night (morning). She's wondering how best to start giving him the verbal brush-off—how she can possibly make it sound convincing that she's not interested in _him_ like _that_ —when he speaks again.

"Did Steve say something?"

She blinks at him. _No, Steve is exactly the wingman you deserve._ "Huh?"

"Did Steve convince you not to be around me? He mentioned how you hadn't had any defensive training and I realized…" He stops, slumps further. "Do I scare you?"

The last words are a whisper. He's looking down at her floor, his hair covering his face, and though his hands are out of his pockets, the metal one is clenched in a fist, as small as he can make it go.

She's across the room before she can even think about it, covering that fist with her own hand. "No!" She pushes his hair back so can look him square in the eye. "No."

If anything, he'd probably be weirded out that her reaction to seeing him full-on soldier mode is to be hopelessly turned on, but she's not about to confess that to him.

His expression flickers in disbelief, so she carries on. "You already know that I have a terrifying lack of self-preservation, and we've talked about this. You don't see me as a threat, remember? If you don't see me as a threat, you're not a threat to me."

The fist loosens and she pulls her hand away slowly, worried he might try to hold it. "Then why?"

It takes her a moment to grab onto a decent excuse. "Hill," she says, nodding her head with conviction. "She's big on the divide between personal and professional life. Steve asked me to cover you during the mission, but Hill wouldn't allow it if she thought we were friendly. She thinks covering someone you know too well clouds judgment." She's probably right.

He swallows the excuse, possibly because there's a kernel of truth at its core. Hill's big on team-building to the point they trust each other, but there's a professional line she won't cross. "I'll get Steve to talk to her. I don't want to get you into trouble with her, but I want to spend time with you."

"Thanks." He's still slumped, leaving their faces closer together than they should be. She's got a head full of that clean scent again. She steps back and gestures at him. "Come on, old man, stand up straight. You aren't doing your spine any favors."

He raises an eyebrow at her, but pushes himself up to his full height. He's nearly a foot taller than her, but the bulk of him this close doesn't scare her. Mostly she wants to pet all that muscle and sees if it's as firm as it looks under his t-shirt. She blames his distracting body for her next bright idea.

"What if I get Thor or someone to show me some defensive maneuvers? Would that make you feel better?" She cannot believe she's volunteering herself for exercise.

He considers the idea and nods slowly. "It would. I can ask him to show you how to disable me and escape if you ever need to."

"And I'll get Tony to make a me a taser holster so I have it on me at all times." Why wasn't that her first idea? It wouldn't involve physical effort.

He pulls a face. "Should the prospect of getting tased make me happy?"

"Some men pay for that kind of thing," she quips, to his utter bewilderment, but he laughs anyway. The ice is broken.

He's a happy puppy again. Distance is no longer an option.


	5. Chapter 5

**This is a slightly more light-hearted chapter. Or at least I amused myself while writing it.**

* * *

She might not be able to keep away from him without hurting his feelings, but Darcy is determined to regain some control over this narrative. She doesn't believe in the friend-zone, _hates_ the term, but that is exactly where she's going to place James. He is going to be a friend—a good friend—and know beyond a shadow of the doubt that she is off limits as more than that.

She has an idea on how to achieve this. It's a terrible idea, but aren't they all?

"Janie," she wheedles, keeping the wrench her friend is stretching for out of reach. "I need you to set me up with someone."

Jane pauses, squints at Darcy, then pivots to stare at the pile of discarded Red Bull cans on the end of her bench. "I finally did it. I finally overdosed."

"Naw, you didn't. I need you to find me a date. Preferably many dates."

Jane is guiding her away from the machinery gingerly, as if she's afraid Darcy's mere presence might cause it all to malfunction. "I only know scientists."

"I know."

"You once told me to never let you date a scientist and to never, under any circumstances, try to set you up with one. Not even if, and I quote 'He looks exactly like Brad Pitt circa _Thelma and Louise_ and has the certified bedroom skills to match'."

"I remember. I had solid reasons, but my needs have changed. I'm enacting emergency protocol seventeen."

They'd been so bored in Tromsø, and yet so terrified of how events might turn out, they'd drawn up a list of rules for their relationship. Most related to working in the lab, or fieldwork (" _because next time the big scary drunk guy probably won't turn out to be a lost Norse god"_ ), some were about how they were going to navigate the world if Loki won while having each others' backs, the rest were sacred rules for their friendship. Emergency protocol seventeen meant Jane had to discard a promise she'd previously made to Darcy, a protocol which could only be enacted once.

"Are you sure? You can't take this back."

"I'm sure." Darcy knows Jane has questions. Jane is wise enough not to ask said questions. They'll only lead to the futility of trying to talk Darcy out of whatever she's planning. "I need people who I can go out and have a fun time with, who aren't looking for anything serious but I can maybe stretch to three casual dates with."

"Right. Give me a couple of days."

* * *

Bachelor number one is Craig, from the IT labs. She has him pick her up from her office to go to the movies. He's a little late, but he's texts her to let her know ahead of time. One gold star to him.

He earns another gold star when he doesn't quail under the glare James fixes him with when he turns up. Although that might be because he doesn't see it, since he's still typing on his Starkpad as he walks.

James has swung by to see if she's coming to dinner, but she's told him she has other plans. She deflects the conversation before he can ask for more information, asking him about his day, spinning wheels until Craig arrives. She makes an effort to smile especially brightly when she spots him coming up the corridor.

"Sorry," she says to James, cutting him off mid-sentence, "my date is here. Gotta go."

He freezes at her words, mouth wide open as he watches her gather her coat and purse. Then when Craig opens the door, gaze fixed on the screen, James turns towards him, rising to his full height and for the first time Darcy feels small near him. There's a hum of something…menacing…in the room, James' presence expanding to fill the space, and she thinks she can see a hint of _him_ , the alter ego, leaking into James' expression from the corner of her eye. If looks could kill, Craig's head would have just exploded like a watermelon in a vice.

She rushes over to Craig, grabs him by the elbow and spins him around. "I'm ready, let's go!" she says, tugging him back into the corridor. "Don't want to miss the start of the movie. Bye James!" she calls over her shoulder as the door swings shut behind them.

At some point during a distracted viewing of _Brooklyn_ , she decides she's glad for the menacing reaction. She suspects it was driven by a little bit of possessiveness, and she's determined not to get a thrill out of that. Still, it's easier to cope with than seeing him hurting.

Because Darcy is not a complete sociopath, she knows she owes Craig her full presence on this date. Her tack is to treat him like he's auditioning to be her best friend rather than a romantic partner, and it works like a charm. She's able to relax into a conversation with him over a post-movie burger, discovering a shared appreciation of 80s gaming hardware and internet memes. There's little spark between them, but when he asks her to come out with him again the following week, she doesn't hesitate to agree.

She returns to the facility with a stack of burgers, heading to the Avengers' common room. It's a gamble, since she doesn't know who will be around, but it never hurts to be on the ins with superheroes.

"I love you," Barton announces, vaulting off the sofa to grab two.

"I have to treat you all from time to time," she replies, as she's rapidly circled by grabby hands: Nat, Sam, and Steve. James is stood by the pool table, staring across sullenly, so she crosses to him with the last burger, Steve at her heels. "Want the last one?"

He nods and takes it from her without saying a word. Steve gives him a sharp look, a clear admonishment for his poor manners, then Nat joins them. She hands Darcy a pool cue and racks up the balls for a fresh game.

"So, Darce, how was your date?"

The woman should be living under a bridge somewhere. It's clearly her natural habitat.

"It was fun," Darcy replies, and then spends ten minutes talking about the movie, making poor shot after poor shot as she talks. She rounds off with "It was nice to get off base for a while, you know, do something normal for a change?"

"You could have asked one of us," Steve says. "Nat loves movies, don't you?" He turns to her, wide eyes signaling that she needs to agree with him.

"I like Russian art-house films," Nat replies drily. "I don't think they're Darcy's thing." It's a complete lie—Nat loves romantic comedies and anything with animals—but Darcy's not about to call her out when she's in Darcy's corner here.

Steve switches tack. "I don't like the idea of you going out there with people you don't know."

Darcy smiles and taps the taser holster at her hip, hidden for most of the night under her jacket. "Relax, I've got it covered. Plus everyone who works here has been vetted so hard we already know if their grandchildren are going to turn out to be Hydra. Isn't that right, Nat?"

"I oversaw the rectal probes myself," Nat confirms with a wink, leaving Steve spluttering.

"Besides, how am I going to meet anyone if I don't put myself out there?"

She returns her focus to the pool table rather then watching Steve's reaction, if only to discourage him from trying to sell James to her like a QVC presenter on commission.

James still hasn't spoken, but she can feel his gaze burning a hole in the side of her head. She hopes he's not deciding this is a cue to win her over. Nat has strict instructions to cut that off at the knees at the first inkling of him colluding with Steve.

"I get it," Nat says. "We've all got somebody out there with our words on. It'd be nice to have the time to search for them."

Darcy controls her wince. It's not an outright lie, but it's a carefully worded piece of misdirection, to remind James that Darcy is not his soulmate.

He looks like he's swallowed a lemon and leaves a few minutes later. Darcy bids everyone goodbye and retreats to her quarters not long after, stomach twisting with emotions she doesn't have the energy to examine too closely, not even as sleep evades her.

* * *

Darcy has to make the first move, sending James a photo the next morning of a small meltdown in one of the labs.

 _You would think there are enough PhDs in this place that someone would know which chemicals not to mix together._

He replies with a smiley face and she takes it as a good sign.

The burgers have earned her a standing invitation to the Avengers' common room and into the never-ending pool tournament.

"You know, this really isn't fair," she complains after getting trounced for the eighth game in a row. "Every last one of you is enhanced in someway or has spent years training to hit targets. I'm a glorified intern with less-than-perfect vision."

"I am neither of those things," Sam corrects as he sinks the 8-ball and beats her again. "I'm just much better at pool than you are."

"We could make this fairer," Nat suggests. "Teams?"

"Yes!" Darcy agrees. "Dibs on Rogers and Barnes."

"Dibs on not being in a team with Lewis," Sam says, and she sticks her tongue out at him.

James comes to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with her. "I'd kick your ass with one hand tied behind my back. Darcy's no handicap."

"Ah-ha! Suck it Wilson…hey, wait a minute!" She gives James a half-hearted smack to the chest when she notices the insult. He just grins at her.

Nat proclaims it would be unfair to have the archer and sniper on the same team, and James drapes an arm over Darcy's shoulder to stake his claim. She forgets how to breathe for a moment when he does it—it's the closest contact they've ever had, and he's so _firm_. She wants to nuzzle into him, or throw his arm off her and run away, but instead she takes a deep breath and forces herself to relax. It's a friendly gesture and she needs to treat it that way.

Sam has already picked his side, and Nat sticks with Barton. Darcy sends a text around to claim Thor, Jane and Erik for their team, while Nat nabs Wanda, Helen and Maria. Barton makes an ill-judged comment about an estrogen imbalance, until Nat points out that Helen was a state champion in college. And also punches him in the thigh.

"We going to invite Tony and Pepper to join in?" asks Sam.

Nat shakes her head. "You can't play games with Tony. He gets frustrated that he's losing and sets fire to things. Pepper only plays for money. Six figure money."

The lists of team members are pinned up next to the pool table and Barton scrolls "Avengers' civil war" across the top.

The tournament begins in earnest, team members able to cover for each other's absences. Darcy lets James win her games for her while enjoying the site of him repeatedly bending over in clingy sweatpants. She doesn't think sweatpants normally cling to people, but they do to him.

Mid high-five after another victory, he corrects her and tells her to call him Bucky instead of James. "James is too formal, and you're my friend."

She beams at him, and Steve beams at her over James' shoulder. Nat just raises an eyebrow.

In the meantime, Darcy goes on two more dates with Craig. It's becoming a Friday night standing date until she senses the shift when they return from the third outing. He's quieter as they exit his car in the facility's underground parking lot and head for the elevator, their conversation stuttering to a halt as he builds to something.

She blocks the elevator call button before he can press it.

"Your words are still black, right?" she asks him.

He blinks at how boldly she's asked the question, but nods. "Yeah, they are."

"I thought so. It's been nice, but let's not make this into something more than it should be."

He actually seems relieved. They part ways promising to remain on friendly terms, and Darcy has already text Jane before she's back in her rooms, asking her to line up the next guy on the list.

So far the plan is working out as well as can be expected. James… _Bucky_ …is, if not the mayor of the friend-zone, on his way to becoming a minor official.

On nights when the common room is emptier, they play board games instead. They gather around the low coffee table the board is set up on, players coming and going. Tonight the table has been dragged over to the sofa where Darcy and Bucky sit, while Steve is on a beanbag on the floor. Bucky's thigh presses against hers, and she's glad they're playing _Risk_ , because it forces her to concentrate.

"You can't do that, Buck," Steve tells him for the ninth time in an hour.

"Why not?"

"It's not allowed."

"It's bullshit, is what it is."

She forms an alliance with him—since it's not explicitly proscribed in the rules—and they hand Steve his ass. Then when it's just the two of them, Darcy turns on Bucky and demolishes his defenses. She crows victory while he sits back with folded arms, all but pouting.

"I would _never_ do that to you," he insists.

"Then you will _never_ win."

Nat arrives and they set up a round of _Clue_. Nat glances across at Darcy, gaze questioning that she wants to move onto phase two of the grand plan. Darcy meets her stare and nods once, firmly, while the boys bicker about which characters they get to be.

This will hurt Darcy more than it hurts Bucky.

"You hanging with us tomorrow?" Nat begins.

Darcy scoffs. "It's Friday, remember? Places to be, people to see."

"Oh yeah, who?"

"I think his name is Greg." She shrugs. "Hopefully we'll end up in that burger place again."

Bucky stiffens beside her and Steve's brow furrows.

"What happened to the other guy?" Steve asks.

"He was nice, but there was no spark there. It'd be liked dating any of you guys."

Bucky still hasn't moved and Steve's staring at him with obvious concern. Darcy pretends Nat's the only person in the room.

"Then you keep looking," Nat continues, playing at oblivious. "And in the meantime, you keep bringing us burgers. Hey, Rogers, you asked out that girl from admin yet? You could take her for a burger."

It's enough to tear his attention from Bucky. "Aww, not this again Nat," he groans.

"Have you even spoken to her?"

"I look vaguely in the direction of a girl _once_ and you will not let it drop."

"That's a no then. Maybe you could just try speaking to her."

"Yeah," Darcy chimes in. "She could be your soulmate. A few words and _bam_."

"Exactly. All your dating problems solved, Rogers."

"I don't have dating problems, because I don't date. I have a very full schedule ridding the world of secret Nazi organizations, robots and occasional alien armies."

Nat raises an eyebrow and points at the game board. Steve, in a move which would shock middle America but no one who actually knows him, flips her off. She tuts and turns her attention elsewhere. "What about you, Barnes? You ready to get out there and find someone willing to rock your world?"

"I don't think that's a good idea," he replies, gaze fixed on the carpet between his feet.

"You've been friends with Steve too long. You wouldn't recognize a good idea if it came along and smacked you in the face. I know someone in accounting who'd be perfect for a first date."

"Drop it," he commands, and she shrugs. The subject is abandoned for the evening, but Nat's persistent, and she's made a promise to Darcy.

It takes Darcy two dates with Greg and common room mission reports for Bucky to break.

"Did you smooch him?" Nat asks Darcy when she turns up with donuts.

"Who actually uses the word smooch?" Darcy deflects. "Just because I'm the only one around here attempting to have a love life doesn't mean you get to hear all the details."

"Well, you're no fun." Nat turns to Steve instead, who's in the process of inhaling a Boston cream. "But the good news is I know that Amelia would definitely be interested if you asked her out."

"Who's Amelia?" Bucky asks, and it's clear by the look on Steve's face that he isn't sure either.

"The girl from admin. And she has a friend who likes tall, dark and handsome. You could make it a double date."

It takes everything Darcy has to paste a goofy smile onto her face and feign excitement. "Yes! You have to!"

Bucky's smile is bitter. "I think you both missed the part where I'm not all that safe to be around."

"Pffft." Darcy folds her arms across her chest and narrows her eyes at him. "You're nowhere near as scary as you like to think you are. And Steve will be there."

"You can't let Amelia down," Nat cajoles.

Steve and Bucky exchange a look. Whatever they decide, it's Steve who replies. "Fine. One date, just to shut you up. Then you have to back off."

"No deal," she replies. "You've both got someone out there waiting for you, and I'm not resting until we've found them."

Darcy claps her hands in imitation excitement. "I know the perfect place you can take them to."

Phase two is trying to find Bucky's soulmate. Darcy's pretty damn sure it's the most masochistic thing anyone has ever done.


	6. Chapter 6

"I can't do it."

Darcy glances up from her phone to find Bucky outside her door. She's returning from the office to get ready for her Friday night date with Greg. It's the third one, and she's gearing up to break things off before it goes any further.

"Can't do what?"

"This date." He's wearing sweatpants and a ragged t-shirt, and the glow on his skin suggests he's come straight from the gym. He runs his flesh hand through his hair, which has curled at the ends while damp. "I'm not ready."

Darcy unlocks the door and gestures him inside. She's got half an hour to get changed, and this is going to eat into her eyeliner time. She could call Nat in as a reinforcement, but Nat would be too heavy-handed, too blunt. "What makes you think you're not ready?"

"I don't know her," he says. "I don't even know the name of this girl! I don't know if she knows who she's agreed to go on a date with and what her reaction to me will be. I can't remember what dating's like or what I'm supposed to do—I should never have agreed to this."

Darcy guides him to the sofa and sits on the pouffe she usually uses as a footstool, right in his eyeline. "First of all, I know Nat has checked this girl out thoroughly, and she's probably sought Sam's approval too. No way either of them would be sending you out there if they didn't think you could handle it. Second, you're in this with Steve and he is _terrible_ with women. All you have to do is not be as bad as him."

Bucky huffs out a laugh. "So I just keep my mouth shut and let him do all the talking?"

"Something like that. If you need to, tell embarrassing stories about him. They'll love it."

He gives a shaky sigh. "I don't know. I've barely left the facility except for missions. The idea of the outside world freaks me out a little."

"Hmm." Maybe a date wasn't the best place to start with that. "This is only meant to be a casual thing. Just think of it as spending time with friends, or potential friends. Take the pressure off. You're going to the movies, right? Don't pick anything with lots of violence. You want a comedy, something that will make you relax. And remember, Steve's going to be with you. He knows how to calm you down."

He stares down at his left hand. "What if she thinks I'm a freak?" He's got it fisted up tight again, though some of the plates are shifting in his agitation.

She reaches over and grabs his hand, tugging until it loosens so she can weave her fingers through his. "Then you tell her to fuck off and you come home."

"You say it likes it's so easy. People can't help how they react to me, not when they know what I've done."

"It _is_ so easy. You think Steve's going to hang around when someone's treating you like crap? If she can't take you at face value, then she's not worth your time." She finishes with a firm head nod. "You and Stevie just go enjoy your film, get some grub, then come home and kick ass at pool. Sam's got his eye on the grand prize and I am not about to let him have it."

She rises, ready to guide him back out so she can start getting changed, but he stays sitting, still holding onto her hand.

"It'd be easier with you."

She's glad that's he still staring at their hands, his hair covering his face. It means he can't see her panicked, flustered reaction. She peels her fingers away. "Go have fun, Bucky," she replies gently when the panic has passed. "Take a few hours with your best friend away from everything this place represents and enjoy it."

He gets to his feet without looking at her. "Will you be here when we get back?"

She glances at her phone, wondering if Greg will even see her cancellation message before he arrives to pick her up. "Yeah, I'll be here."

* * *

She heads to the common room, hoping to find Jane, but is intercepted by Nat. "Steve's asked me to monitor the date. He's worried that Rumlow's still out there and might try and make a move if they leave the facility. You've used the monitoring equipment more than I have."

It's true, but Nat is a tech whizz. She doesn't actually need help. She wants Darcy to watch the date unfold, for reasons unknown. Darcy doubts she will like the reasons.

They head to the control room, which is empty apart from the few staff members who are on the night shift. They monitor the feeds of undercover agents and put out the call for more cover when something urgent comes up. It's not as a bad a shift as it sounds, because it's normally quiet enough you can watch TV and eat takeout, all while getting paid extra for unsociable hours. It's Sunday afternoons when the unexpected shit usually hits the fan, and nobody's sure why.

Darcy's usual station is empty, so they head to that. She logs in and homes in on Bucky's tracking device, while Nat pulls up a free chair and straddles it backwards. Darcy selects the surveillance feeds she wants and opens them up.

Steve and Bucky are meeting their dates at the cinema rather than picking them up, even though they'll all be traveling to and from the facility. Steve's choice, apparently. They're at a smaller three-screen cinema several towns away, rather than the multiplex in the closest town, and they haven't booked tickets. Darcy hacks into the cameras covering the cinema's foyer where the men wait, then does a sweep of the surrounding area. There's not much high ground for snipers, or cover for people to hide out in the open, which is probably why Steve picked it. She checks for people waiting in cars too, but there's no sign of anyone loitering.

"All clear so far," Darcy murmurs, bringing the foyer back to the main screen. From this angle the men have their backs to her. She recognizes the tension in Bucky's body all the same, even in Steve, who's obviously talking a mile a minute to a quiet Bucky. They're dressed casually, in jeans and jackets, though Bucky has a glove covering his left hand.

The women approach, and Darcy doesn't know either of them, though it's easy to recognize the look of the appreciation the one on the left gives Bucky. She speaks and he dips his head in acknowledgment. She smiles at his response, and the group head towards the counter to purchase tickets and snacks. Bucky's hands are in his pockets and he seems to be letting Steve do most of the talking.

"Rewind it to when she spoke," Nat instructs, so Darcy does. Nat leans across and zooms the picture in until they have a larger, if grainy, view of Bucky's date's mouth. She watches, then shakes her head. "Okay, definitely not his words."

"You can lip read?" Nat just looks sideways at her. "Of course you can lip read."

There's no camera in the theater itself, so they settle in to watch the surrounding area. It's a fairly boring task, though Darcy's on edge anyway. She doesn't think it has anything to do with Rumlow or Hydra. Not only do Stark Enterprises ensure that no one else has access to the surveillance cameras between the facility and the nearest highway, so there's no way of tracking vehicles leaving the place, but the only people who know about the date are in the Avengers' circle of trust, or the girls themselves. The chances Nat hasn't been monitoring all their communications, internal and external, since the date was set up are about the same as Darcy winning an Olympic medal for fencing. (No one is ever going to be stupid enough to hand her a sword).

She pulls up a couple of episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine on the central screen instead, subtitles on so they don't distract anyone else who's working, and settles in to wait for the group to emerge. Her fidgeting clearly annoys Nat, but Darcy's still not sure why she's here anyway. Nat could probably access all the footage on her Starkpad, hacking into the surveillance cameras for shits and giggles.

The movie finally finishes and people begin filing out, but Bucky and Steve are the very last ones to leave, and the foyer is empty when they emerge. She catches a glimpse of Bucky's face, and he's sharing a joke with his date, an easy smile gracing his face. She has her hand on his forearm, the touch light but accepted.

The date isn't his soulmate, they've established that. So why does this hurt so much?

She turns to Nat. "You're making me watch this—" she gestures to the friendly intimacy "—on purpose."

"Took you long enough to figure out."

"What did I ever do to you?"

Nat fixes her with that _I-see-everything-I-know-everything_ stare. "You wanted this. One way or the other, you're going to have to face it. I thought it would be a good idea to show you what you'll be forcing yourself to deal with up front, so you can back out now."

Darcy swallows, looks at the group on the screen. Bucky's body language has relaxed considerably. He looks happy, his smile broad and lovely. She's never seen him smile like this with another person who wasn't Steve. It's like there's a spinning ball of metal shards inside her, hitting all her tender spots.

"Might as well get used to it." Maybe in time she'll grow immune to the feeling.

* * *

Nat doesn't return to the common room with her, but Jane and Helen are there, relaxing with a bottle of wine. Darcy gratefully grabs a glass and slumps onto the sofa.

"That good, huh?" Helen asks. She's aware of the soulmate/not-soulmate mess, but not of current events.

"You don't know the half of it," Jane says.

"Maybe Helen can be my new sounding board, since Nat has turned evil. You're a responsible adult, aren't you Helen? You regularly make sound, rational decisions."

Jane makes a sound of protest in the background—probably at being implicitly ruled out as a responsible adult—while Helen pulls a face. "I'm mostly faking it. Sorry Darcy."

"Maybe this isn't the best place to take about it," Jane points out, and Darcy nods in agreement.

She knows he's coming before she hears a sound, and how she does is beyond her understanding. But she's alert, and then a few moments later there's the sound of boots stomping down the corridor.

"We got shawarma!" Steve calls out, entering the room with several take-out bags.

"What the hell, Rogers?" Darcy replies. "I bring you quality food and you return with _this_ abomination?"

"I told him," Bucky says, and holds up his own bag. "I made him get donuts too."

"You are my hero!" He grins, and she decides nothing else matters. If he's happy, she's happy. He showered and shaved between leaving her apartment and heading out with Steve, so his jaw is stubble-free for once, and it makes him appear younger than usual. It is also gives her an unfettered view of his jawline and cheekbones, which is appreciated but not helpful.

For some peculiar reason, the shawarma is bypassed entirely in favor of the donuts and Steve is left to eat it all himself. "If you don't finish it tonight, throw it out," Helen suggests. "I don't think it would do even your digestive system much good if it's reheated tomorrow."

"I thought you all liked it," he mutters.

"We ate it because it was the only place open," Barton says. He appeared at the same time the food did. "Everywhere else had been reduced to rubble, remember?"

"So how'd it go?" Darcy asks.

Bucky shares a look with Steve and they both shrug. "It was fun," Steve says. "But I don't think we'll be seeing them again."

"You know Nat's going to try and introduce you to everyone in the facility until someone sticks."

"She can try. What about you—didn't you go out with Greg tonight?"

Bucky pauses mid-chew to look at her.

"Nah, he had to cancel," she lies smoothly. "Same time next week, though. What movie did you watch?"

When the donuts are gone and it's time to turn in, Bucky offers to walk her back to her quarters. She doesn't bother making excuses for him not to, sensing this is probably going to be a continuation of their earlier conversation.

"I told you that you were ready," she says, nudging him with her elbow as they walk. "What was she like?"

He chews his lip, pondering his answer. "Sweet. And pretty, I suppose."

"Ouch. Don't ever let her hear you say that."

"In fairness, I don't think I was what she was looking for either."

"Ah, well. Plenty more fish in the sea."

"Yeah. Maybe."

"Or you could bypass the whole dating process. Just keep introducing yourself to people and see if your words come up. That's what people used to do, isn't it? Minimum effort, maximum result."

He pulls a face, and she can't read it beyond frustration. "I don't know. Nat's pushing us to find someone, but I think it's for Steve's benefit more than mine. I'm not ready for anything serious. Hell, I may never be ready. I know I have words, but I hope the universe holds off until I'm in a better place before inflicting me on some poor, unsuspecting soul who—"

"Hey!" She rounds on him, cutting him off. "You listen to me, and you listen to me good. Whoever's going to say your words will be lucky to have you, and they better be ready to take care of you. We've all got our problems, some more than most, but that's the point of a soulmate. You're the best person for each other, no matter what. So if I catch you talking like this again, we'll be having words, you hear?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Don't you start that shit, either. But if it helps, I'll have a word with Nat and get her to back off. We'll let destiny take it's course."

"Thanks."

"You can still go out and do things outside the facility. There's a bowling alley, a climbing wall, even a karaoke bar."

He shudders at the last suggestion. "I'm good. It was nice to feel normal for a few hours, but that's not me anymore. I know I can't stay here forever, but I feel safe here, and I'm going to enjoy it while I can."

They're at her door. She bids him goodnight and goes inside, then shuts the door and leans on it. She bashes her head against it a few times for good measure.

Everything she's tried has been an utter failure. She's pretty sure he's got the message loud and clear that she's off-limits as anything more than a friend, but beyond that she kept sliding down the rabbit hole until she went into free-fall. Her days revolve around him and a good portion of her nights too; she cares about whether he's happy more than she cares about whether she's happy herself, even when it hurts. She's got every moment of bodily contact they've ever had etched in her memory and just the sound of his voice makes her smile. And his smile, that pure, brilliant grin that lights him up from the inside, she can use that as a shield against the world, wrapping its warmth around herself when it all gets too much.

It's no longer a matter of trying not to fall for him. It's far too late for that.


	7. Chapter 7

**This is the longest chapter yet! I think there are about three chapters to go.**

 **I've compiled a playlist. You can look for it on Tumblr under my 'music I like' tag, since FFnet doesn't like links. I'd definitely recommend the song I named the story after, which is by Stevie Nicks and can be found on YouTube in various versions.**

* * *

Darcy's re-evaluating her opinion on night shifts. She's just completed one, despite them not being a requirement for her role, because her friend Sarah needed the weekend off to go home for her cousin's wedding. It means Darcy's going to lose most of her Saturday to sleeping, but at least she had a valid for getting out of last night's date with Greg. In fact, she'd used it as an excuse to let him down gently. He'd known it was coming, since it was the second week in a row she'd canceled, and hadn't seemed too bummed.

Jane already has bachelor number three on standby. He's an Irish geneticist on Helen's team.

"He's a really good guy, Darce. Smart, funny, seriously good-looking, _killer_ accent."

"Then why is he single?"

"You know how it is," Jane replies with a shrug. "People don't like to get involved when their marks are still black."

So Darcy already has a date lined up for this Friday. She shuffles through the door to her quarters and pokes at the buttons which close the blackout blinds, before kicking her shoes off and stumbling towards her bedroom.

On the bedside table she has a little calendar, one she has to flip every day to get a cute photo of a baby animal. She slops onto the bed but doesn't shut her eyes before turning to this morning's picture, which is a tiny Labrador puppy on its back. Below it, past Darcy has scribbled the words "seven months".

Oh. Right.

That means it's been about five months since she made the decision to give it a year and leave. She'd gone through the calendar and written milestones for herself, as a reminder for when things got rough.

Things aren't rough, just complicated, especially with her realization about the depths of her feelings for Bucky. She's nearly halfway through the year. Maybe it's not too early to ask for that transfer?

No. Not before Rumlow's caught. Their intel says he has it in for Steve because of the injuries he sustained when the Triskelion was destroyed, and he knows going after Bucky would hurt Steve more than physical pain ever would.

Steve would never forgive her for walking away and letting someone else cover Bucky, no matter how capable that other person was. And she's come to see Steve as a friend too.

What is her life?

She screws her eyes shut and focuses on a calming technique Dr Banner taught her, relaxing from her toes upwards. She needs to sleep, there's another shift to get through tonight. If she's lucky, Rumlow will turn up so they can kick his ass, and close that chapter.

* * *

Sean, the inexplicably-single scientist, actually seeks her out before their date, turning up in her office with a latte. He's tall and slim, with messy hair, cheekbones like razorblades, and a lopsided smile.

"I asked Helen what you like," he says, offering her the coffee cup. "It's an excuse to meet you. I'm not great with new people, so I thought it might be easier to be awkward somewhere we can make an easy escape from, rather than being stuck with each other for hours."

He's blushing by the time he's finished rambling, and Darcy realizes she's grinning at him. Jane hadn't been wrong about the accent. "Did Helen tell you my affection can be bought with caffeine?"

"She may have said something to that effect, yes."

"Did she tell you anything else?"

"A few things, but I'm keeping them under wraps for when I need the big guns." He drops to a dramatic whisper. " _Cadbury's._ "

She widens her eyes dramatically. "The dirty traitor."

He shrugs. "I know her weaknesses to, it makes her pliable. But you should know I have my sources and can absolutely hook you up with good chocolate. Please remember that when I make a fool of myself on Friday."

Darcy laughs. "Sure, I'll try to go easy on you. Thanks for the coffee."

He leaves her to nurse the latte. That was too easy. She'd almost found herself flirting with him, and misgivings creep in. It's one thing to date a guy with little mutual interest, but is dating a guy she has obvious chemistry with crossing a line?

She ignores her better instincts when she meets him at the movie theater—the little one Steve and Bucky went to—and he admits he noticed her around the facility before Jane ever put out feelers.

"You're the cool girl," he says. "You hang out with the Avengers, and you're friends with Jane and Helen. They listen to you. Everyone's in awe."

"See, when I was in high school, being friends with the nerds just made you another nerd."

"Yes, but being a nerd is a step above being a dork, so you outclass the rest of us science peons. And you have touched Thor's bicep, which surely imbues you with some kind of contact-godliness."

"Nah, that's entirely my own."

They giggle together the whole evening, and for once she decides to forgo leaving early enough to deliver food to the common room. Instead, they grab a booth in a diner, swapping stories about science mishaps over fried food and milkshakes.

She's easily forgiven when she swings by the common room the next morning with a batch of homemade cupcakes. Bucky's waiting for her with coffee, a detail she almost misses because she's in the middle of texting Sean. She puts the phone away and concentrates on the people around her.

"Well, hey there, dirty stop-out," Nat teases, setting up a Monopoly board. (Darcy can see a fist-fight occurring in the near future; nobody loses gracefully at Monopoly).

"I was home by midnight, mom."

"Really? I'm so disappointed in you."

Darcy flips her off, and Nat blows her a kiss in return.

"I don't think what Darcy does is any of our business," Steve interrupts, clearly trying to move away from a topic which has Bucky fidgeting.

"You've changed your tune," Nat says, ignoring Darcy's warning look. "You used to want a detailed itinerary when she left the facility."

"It may have been pointed out to me that Darcy is a grown woman who can look after herself and make her own choices." Darcy doesn't need to guess who did the pointing; Bucky's narrowing his eyes at Steve. "So long as she always has her taser on her."

"Aye aye captain!" Darcy even salutes him. "And Nat taught me how to break out of a guy's hold long enough to get to the taser."

"You did?" Steve's distracted enough that he misses Nat allocating herself extra cash. Bucky, however, does not. He holds out an expectant hand, waiting for her to hand it all over.

"Steve's banker," he decrees, and Nat rolls her eyes but doesn't argue. Steve's the only one honest enough not to abuse the position. Nat will have to find other ways to cheat.

"Thor was trying to teach her self-defense," she says, "but he was coming at it all wrong. He forgot Darcy can't just punch a guy in the face and give him brain damage. I showed her some actually useful moves."

"I can't choke anyone with my thighs, but my ball-kneeing technique has been rated superb," Darcy adds gleefully.

Both Steve and Bucky splutter at the image, and Darcy steers the conversation into calmer waters.

* * *

Darcy goes home for her birthday, despite the fact that Tony begs her to let him throw her a party. She placates him by telling him he can throw a party anyway, and he doesn't even have to pretend it's for her. She needs to spend some time with her parents, since it's so infrequently that she manages to do so.

She has a quiet meal with her Science Family—Jane, Thor, Erik—before she leaves, and then a bigger meal with the Avengers where she's swamped with cards and presents. Sean passes on a massive slab of Cadbury's via Jane. Even Nat, who's out in the field, has left something for her. It's a weapon, naturally, a set of the tiny taser disks that she uses with her Widow's Bites. These ones don't need Widow's Bites to work, intended to be disposable. Bucky nods his approval when he sees them.

"She used one of those on my arm, once," he tells her after the meal. He's the only one who hasn't given her a present yet, and Darcy gets the sense he wants to do it in private, which is why he's walked her back to her quarters.

She invites him inside, and he pulls a card and small parcel from the front pocket of his hoodie. The card's a hand-drawn doodle, obviously part of a set with the one Steve gave her. In this one, she's eating a massive cake. In the other one, she was surrounded by a mound of torn wrapping paper and balloons. She grins at the card and adds it to her pile without reading the message inside.

She takes the parcel and pulls on the end of the bow on top of it. "Did you wrap this?"

"YouTube," he mumbles in response.

She snickers, and the bow comes apart, leaving her with a length of purple ribbon. He fidgets as she finds the edge of the wrapping paper and slowly pulls it apart, rather than tearing into it, but she wants to respect the effort he put into decorating it.

There's a velvet box inside, too big to make her panic. Instead, when she flips the lid open, there's a necklace inside: delicate, silver filigree, with a cluster of crystals forming a pendant. She gasps at how pretty it is.

"It's functional," he says quickly. "You can crush any of the crystals, and it works like a panic button. It'll alert us and we can track you down. I asked Tony to make it."

She flings her arms around him, forgetting that surprise contact isn't always the best idea around Bucky. He stiffens for a moment, before his arms snake around her back, pulling her even tighter against him, dropping his face into the crook of her neck. She can feel his breath against her skin, and she has goosebumps everywhere, despite the fact that he's so warm where they're pressed together. Warm and solid.

"You like it?" he asks, the words directed into her hair, and she pulls away to grin up at him.

"It's amazing. Tony tried to hand out bracelets with panic buttons but they were horrible gaudy things. This I will actually wear."

"Starting tomorrow, when you go home?"

"Starting tomorrow, when I go home," she parrots.

It's only later on, when she's finished packing for the trip, and has started arranging the cards on her coffee table, that she reads the message he's written in her card.

Dear Darcy,

 _I hope you have a wonderful day, though I wish I got to spend it with you. You've become one of the most important people in my life in such a short space of time. You deserve a special day,_

 _Love Bucky._

He's finished with three kisses. She clutches the card to her chest before slipping it into her purse.

She wasn't planning on mentioning Bucky or the whole soulmate deal to her parents. In fact, she tells them about Sean instead, and how it's early days but how nice he is. They're only two dates in but Darcy knows in a parallel universe, where soulmarks didn't exist, she'd be thinking long term about him. Her mother's thrilled, right until she walks into Darcy's old bedroom without knocking and catches sight of the exposed soulmark as she's changing.

"No wonder you're so excited about this guy!" she exclaims, her smile brightening as she takes in the silver tint of the lettering.

Darcy freezes, then takes a deep breath. "No, Sean didn't say these."

"What do you mean? If it wasn't him, why are you dating him?"

Darcy finishes pulling her jeans on before answering. "I'm not going to have a relationship with my soulmate."

Her mother gasps, hands flying up to cover her mouth. "On purpose? You do—you do know who he is, don't you? Your father and I will pay if you need someone to track him down…"

She's talking about hiring an investigator, the kind people use to track down soulmates they've met and not got contact details for.

"No, mom, I know who he is. It's just very complicated."

So she tells each other everything. She cries, her mother cries, her father finds out and while he doesn't cry, he gets very somber. As birthdays go, even her mother's excellent cake can't really salvage it.

She decides to cut the trip home short, citing a mountain of work that needs doing, and it's not entirely a lie. When the quinjet touches down to pick her up, she hugs her parents goodbye in their yard.

"You come home if you ever need space," her mother says. "I won't press you to talk about it if you don't want to, but it would be lovely to see you more often."

"Thanks mom. I may end up taking you up on that offer."

"Is that Captain America?" her father asks in bewilderment as the ramp touches down, recognizing Steve immediately even though he's in his civvies. Barton flew her down, but apparently her boys have come to take her home. Bucky's next to Steve, looking a little more uncomfortable. Her mother's question is quieter.

"Is that him?"

Darcy nods, then grabs her things. "I'll definitely be back for Christmas!" she says in parting, heading up the ramp rather than letting the guys come down to meet her. The last thing she needs is her mother giving the game away with big sorrowful eyes in Bucky's direction. She also doesn't really want to introduce Bucky to her parents; it would feel too close to bringing a boyfriend home.

Bucky's got flour on his jeans. He won't tell her why, until they get back to the common room and there's a cake waiting for her, Happy Birthday Darcy piped clumsily on top. She claps her hands with joy and cuts it up for everyone.

"I'll make you one for your birthday," she promises him, but he pulls a face.

"I don't even know how old I technically am. Do I count from the year I was born, or do I count up to when I fell and add on a few years to make up for time out of cryo?"

"Call it 21 and have done with it. That's what I do. My grandma was 21 until she died—it's a family tradition I'll let you borrow."

Cake demolished, she heads to her office, where there are messages from Nat waiting. She's still out in the field, and her gut instinct tells her that Rumlow is planning something, even if she can't get a solid lead on his trail. He's using decoys, and even Nat can't be in three places at once. One of the other field agents has called a tip-off in from Chicago, and Nat's not happy about it.

"Steve's insisting they head out, even though he's aware I think it's a wild goose chase. He won't leave any stone unturned."

"When?"

"This afternoon."

At least it's not a night raid.

Darcy's position as Bucky's handler has never been revoked. It's only his third mission with the team, the second being a relatively simple clear out of an abandoned base, and she thinks she can justify keeping the position, especially with Nat's doubts. She takes the opportunity to scan the area before the team head out, suggesting what she thinks will be good spots on high ground for Bucky and Barton, with few access points. It should prevent an ambush, but Sam's going to stay in the air, shifting between the pair of them if he needs to.

She's a bag of nerves, despite the fact it's broad daylight this time. Bucky agrees with the rooftop position she's selected, and this time she's also managed to get a camera up there, dropped in place by Sam, so she's not relying on street-level surveillance to alert her if something goes wrong.

There's no sign of Rumlow, or his decoy. Maybe they left it too long to make a move, but by the amount of dust inside—according to the photos she sees during the debrief—no one's spent any amount of time in that warehouse for a while.

At least she got to stare at Bucky in full tactical gear for an hour.

The failure leaves the whole team on edge, and Nat refuses to come home just yet. She thinks she's got the identity of one of the decoys. Darcy almost feels sorry for the decoy, now that Nat's on his trail like a bloodhound.

Bucky's withdrawn, going straight to the gym to take his frustration out on several poor, unsuspecting punching bags, returning as most people are heading to bed. He's showered, his hair still damp, and he carries the scent of his shampoo around him like a cloud.

"Can you find out if I was ever there?" he asks Darcy. "That place…it's niggling at me. Like it was familiar."

She gnaws at her lower lip. "It might be in your file." She means the infamous Hydra/KGB file, rather than the one the Avengers Initiative has for its staff members. "I've never looked in it, I don't even think I have the clearance for that."

"Steve can get you the clearance." From the way he flinches, he's regretting suggesting that. If she looks in his file, she'll be able to read about every assassination he was involved in. She's more worried about seeing all the things they put him through. She knows there are photos.

"I can't read Russian though," she points out. His relief at this stumbling block is palpable. "We can wait for Nat to return, or maybe Friday can give you a private report?"

He shakes his head. "It's not available electronically." Darcy guesses that's because it can't be hacked into if it only exists on paper. "I'll wait for Nat. It's not that important."

"Nobody found anything except dust, so it can't be too significant. Rumlow's just trying to get under your skin. He's probably jealous that you actually have some."

He snorts. "If you ever meet him, please crush all the crystals on your pendant and try not to say anything. I think you might annoy him."

"That's why I plan on never meeting him. And between you and me, I know the official plan is to bring him in alive, but I won't lose any sleep if somebody has to put a bullet in his brain."

"Me either. In fact, I'd sleep easier."

* * *

 _Can you tell Sean to stop talking about you? I already know most of this stuff._

The grumpy text comes from Helen on Monday afternoon following another Friday night at the diner. It amplifies Darcy's worries about dating Sean, especially since he hasn't stopped texting her all weekend.

He drops by every day with a coffee. So does Bucky. She doesn't have the heart to tell either of them that her increased caffeine intake is not doing her sleeping pattern any favors.

She also doesn't cancel her upcoming date with Sean. He's enthusiastic, but he's not pushy, and she can't be sure he's romantically interested. He could just be looking for a friend outside the small circle of science technicians. She enjoys his company, and going out with him is a welcome break from everything the facility represented. She'd like that again, even if only for one night.

She regrets rationalizing it ten minutes into the date. He's taken her to a restaurant—not exactly a fancy-pants one, but she'd feel more comfortable in pumps and a dress than the sneakers and jeans she has on. It's definitely not a diner or burger joint. He hasn't bought her flowers, and for that she's thankful. He also doesn't offer to pull out her seat. She doesn't deduct points in comparison with _other people._

"I hope you like Italian," he says as he sits down across from her. There's a candle on the table, and wine glasses. She makes a firm decision to stick to Coke.

"Sure, who doesn't?"

"I know we were looking to go somewhere more casual, but this came with a good recommendation."

He didn't tell her ahead of time, giving her fair warning to dress up, so she wouldn't cancel. She knows this, and she finds it charming. She finds everything about him charming, because he's so obviously nervous and wanting to impress her. If it weren't for her _stupid words_ , she'd be walking on air that someone like Sean was interested in her.

There's not even going to be a friendship to salvage out of this. She pretty damn sure that's not what he wants.

She skips ordering an appetizer and dessert, despite wanting one of everything on the menu, because she wants this over as quickly as possible. Sean's confused at her turning down food, but she assures him she isn't hungry. Despite that, the conversation flows easily between them, even on the drive home.

It's when they reach the parking garage that things start to go exactly as Darcy feared.

He walks her to the elevator, but stands in front of the call button without pressing it. "I had a lovely night," he says. He's got a soft smile on his face, and she knows what's coming. "Can I kiss you?"

She looks down at the floor and screws her eyes shut, but then realizes she needs to look him in the eye when she responds. He deserves better than her cowardice. She opens them and peers up at him. "I don't think that's a good idea."

All the confidence leaches out of him, his face crumpling at the unexpected rejection. "Oh. I thought things were going well. I must have misunderstood—"

She shakes her head. "You didn't. I'm just not looking for anything serious, and I think you should know that now. I don't want a relationship with you."

He's quiet, processing her words, so when he finally responds he manages to blindside her.

"You said my words."

She has a moment of panic—could the universe get more twisted? But his confession rings hollow; no one could have been that nonchalant when hearing their words, not the way he'd been during their first conversation. She folds her arms. "Prove it." When he doesn't respond, doesn't move, she nods in grim satisfaction. "Thought so."

"You knew already." Now he looks crestfallen, defeated.

"We both knew, or we'd have said something when we first met."

"Please, Darcy. We could still make it work…"

She feels guilty, because she has been using him. She didn't want to, but it hasn't been the same as Craig or Greg. There was a spark between them, and if it wasn't for her words, she'd have wanted to explore it, soulmark be damned. It's the guilt that spurs her confession. "I've met him, okay? I've met him and we're not together—we'll never be together."

He looks like he's been slapped, then gathers a breath. "Sounds like a tough situation. I wish you'd told me."

"It's complicated. But I've not been fair to you, and I'm sorry. You deserve better."

He doesn't argue with her, and she reaches around him to call the elevator. It arrives within seconds, bless Tony Stark, and she reaches up to brush a kiss to Sean's cheek before she steps inside.

"I'd like to be your friend," she says, as gently as she can manage, "but I don't think that's in the cards for us. Take care of yourself."

She hugs herself on the walk back to her quarters, but decides to detour via Starkbucks for a slab of cake. She didn't get dessert and she needs comfort food. It's why it takes her a few seconds to realize she's not alone when she reaches her rooms—she's too busy rummaging in the kitchen drawer for a spoon.

There's movement out of the corner of her eye, a glint of metal. She drops the cake to the counter and spins to face the living room. Bucky is over by the window, staring at her. The room is in darkness so it's hard to read his expression.

"I wanted to make sure you were okay," he begins. He pauses to consider his next words. "I know you can protect yourself, but he was very interested in you. He came to your office a lot and asked people about you. The others didn't."

She feels a cold sweat forming, wondering how much he saw, what he heard. "Bucky…"

"I only followed to make sure you were safe, but I stayed far away. I knew you'd want privacy. I won't do it again. But afterwards…I thought you might need some company."

"So you somehow overrode the security protocols for my quarters? Tony is going to have a meltdown when he realizes you can do that."

His mouth quirks, but he's still staring at her. It's sympathy, she realizes. It's the first time he's ever looked at her that way.

"I am an asshole," she says, leaning back against the counter and hanging her head. "I knew he liked me more than I liked him, but I hoped I was wrong."

He creeps closer. "You're not an asshole. You'd been on a few dates with him, you didn't owe him anything. Anyway, I'm glad you're okay. Thought it might get rough for a moment."

"No, he was a good guy. It would have been easier if he had turned out to be Hydra."

Silence reigns for a minute, but Bucky has to bring _it_ up.

"I heard about your mark." She nods tersely at him, chewing on her lip. "I guess it makes sense. Explains why—" But he shakes his head and doesn't finish.

She holds her breath, waits for him to ask questions— _who?, when?_ —or for him to put the pieces together, but this time, the silence stretches on. "I think I'm just going to go to bed," she says, to fill the quiet, to control the urge to babble.

He nods and moves to the door, resting his hand on her shoulder for a reassuring squeeze as he passes. She almost tells him. Almost lets the confession slip out, tells him who exactly it was who said her words, but fear keeps her silent.

It's gone on too long to tell him now.

"Night, Darcy. Enjoy your cake."


	8. Chapter 8

**Possible trigger ahead - panic attacks are mentioned.**

* * *

Darcy's actually taken a lunch break for once, heading to Starkbucks for something warm, going the long way around to avoid the labs. Sean hasn't texted her since Friday. She doesn't see that situation changing.

Her quiet meal doesn't last long.

"Sean doesn't have a soulmark," Nat begins, sliding into a seat opposite Darcy.

She stops chewing her wrap to gape. "You know this how?"

"What, like it's hard?" Nat replies in a dead-on Valley Girl accent. She's right—all employee files contain identifying marks. Darcy has no business looking in those files, but that never stopped Nat.

"I regret introducing you to classic cinema," Darcy says.

"You're missing the point. He doesn't have a mark, so he doesn't have a soulmate out there. If you dated him, there's no danger of him meeting the one and leaving."

No wonder Sean had been so willing to fall for her. He wasn't waiting for a soulmate who was never going to materialize. He was free to love whoever he wanted…even if he didn't know if it was ever going to last. Maybe it made him a little desperate, too.

"Is there anyone who didn't witness that conversation?"

"Just me and Barnes. He follows you more than you know."

"I'm aware of that now. And I know you think you're helping, but what you're suggesting is seriously unfair to Sean. He might not have a soulmate, but there'll be someone better for him than me. I will only bring crushing misery."

"Are you so sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure. Starting a relationship while I'm in love with someone else is guaranteed to doom it to failure."

Nat's eyebrow twitches in surprise.

"You hadn't figured that out?" Darcy asks.

"I knew things were heading that way."

"Things have reached their destination. So I won't be doing that to Sean, but I don't think I have to keep dating people to discourage Bucky either. He's got the message."

Nat doesn't ask why Darcy's so sure about that. "Phase three, then?"

"I don't even know what phase three is."

"Getting your resume in order and feeding me cupcakes so I drop hints in Pepper's direction about how you'd be a fabulous addition to the New York office."

Darcy sighs. "Not just yet—I think that's phase four. Phase three is finding Brock Rumlow and wiping him from the face of the earth."

* * *

Phase three is easier said than done. Nat drops in and out of the facility. She's tracked down Rumlow's decoy, but found only a decaying corpse.

When she returns with the bad news, Darcy is already following another lead.

"Agent Sanchez mentioned that she thought he had some kind of mask covering his mouth when she saw him on surveillance footage." She pulls up a file on her screen. "That got me thinking. It wasn't just his skin that got burned." She points at the relevant sections of his medical notes, retrieved by IT and interpreted into something Darcy could understand by Helen. "He suffered lung damage due to smoke inhalation and Helen thinks he needs some kind of ventilation. There's no way he could stay active without it."

"So the mask is helping him breathe."

"He's gone a little Darth Vader, yeah. Plus, he must be getting regular medical attention somehow, because putting stress on his lungs will make them deteriorate. He probably needs oxygen when he's not on the move."

"We find who made the mask, we find who's treating him, we've got him. No more chasing shadows." Nat's smile is vicious. "I assumed the mask was there to hide the scars and his identity. Good catch."

A small team is set up to crawl through the leaked SHIELD/Hydra data, searching for the names of medical professionals and anyone with a biology background who could do what Rumlow needed. A handful are working in the facility and ruled out, the rest are ranked according to whether they'd ever had occasion to come into contact with Rumlow, and how capable they are. Field agents are dispatched to locate them and observe. Meanwhile, another list is compiled of doctors with the relevant specialisms.

Darcy's the first one to realize there's a pulmonologist missing from D.C. It's the city Rumlow was treated in after the Triskelion was destroyed, though not by this doctor—that was a team of Hydra-infiltrated people in the nearest hospital. The pulmonologist, Dr Simons, hasn't been seen since around the time Rumlow vanished from the ward he'd been checked into.

Nat's off like a shot, leaving Darcy to try to follow the long-since-cold trail electronically. She feeds information as she gets it to Nat—a possible sighting on grainy footage, the purchase of medical supplies on a fraudulent credit card, noise complaints about a supposedly empty apartment which used to house a dentist's office.

It all helps keep her mind off the fact that the people in the labs definitely _don't_ think she's the cool girl anymore. She doesn't get friendly smiles and head nods when she swings by, and the only people who talk to her are Jane, Erik and Helen. Everyone else has decided she thought she was too good for Sean, even though he fought her corner and let people know it was a soulmate thing—or so Helen tells her.

She doesn't go to the admin common room much nowadays. It would upset her more, but the six month mark is coming up and if she can just ensure Rumlow's out of the picture, she can get out of here. She'll make new friends.

She doesn't hear from Nat from three days, until the woman herself turns up in her office first thing in the morning.

"I have all but visual confirmation of where he's hiding."

Darcy lets out a breathless "Where?"

"A bank vault in D.C."

Darcy sees her doubt reflected on Nat's face. "Rumlow never left D.C.?"

"The vault has tunnels leading in and out of it, added after the bank above closed. It means Rumlow can move around without being seen, or even have supplies brought in by other operatives. I think he's got the doctor down there. It would explain the spikes in electricity usage—there shouldn't be any at all if the building's empty."

"I don't know. He could have decided it was easier to stay put and hide, rather than run. But have you considered this could be him leading us to where he wants us to go?"

"I have. I almost convinced myself to go in there alone, but we have only rough schematics of the tunnels. Even if this is another misdirection, I'd expect it to be booby-trapped."

"So we go in, but we don't go in blind."

They bring Steve and Maria for a full ops meeting, in a conference room with the touchscreen panel between them all.

"Can we use tech to map the tunnels before we go in?" Darcy asks.

"We have developed further some older SHIELD prototypes which should work," says one of the guys from R&D. "They're remote controlled cameras which can fly, but they're small enough to avoid detection. If they follow to the roofline, they can use radar to give us a full 3D image, as well as send us a feed so we can look for potential traps."

"Good," says Maria. "We don't want Rumlow spooked before we arrive, though, so make sure they stick to the tunnels. The vault itself we've got the blueprint for. Do we know how far they extend?"

Nat swipes across the map on the table to a point a few blocks away, zooming into a corner building. "This is the best entrance, in the basement of what was once a bar but is now a vacant store, though I know there are other ways in. It looks like they embellished on an old Prohibition system, which purposely had multiple exit points. The vault spur is a more recent addition, but there could be others."

Maria nodded. "Then the more complete a picture we can have, the better. We don't want any blind spots. We assume this is a trap, and not the kind where they're waiting to ambush us. When can you get those cameras in?"

"They're ready to go, we only need to get them to D.C."

"Nat, you're in charge of the team completing recon. Take whoever you need."

Darcy left behind in mission control on surveillance. She checks all the feeds for the street with Nat's preferred entrance over the previous 24 hours, and when she's given them the all clear, the team head in. Darcy's job is to make sure no one sneaks up on them while they're down there.

It takes a full afternoon, but they have a pretty solid lay of the land when they're done. Nat returns to the conference room with the results.

"Here's the quickest route to take to the vault." She maps it with her finger on top of the rendering done during the afternoon. "There are three tunnels which intersect and they lead out here, here and here. We need to sweep these tunnels first before we head into the vault."

"I suggest we send Vision down to trigger any traps," Maria says. "Even if we didn't see them, it doesn't mean they aren't there. He's impervious to most things which would kill the rest of us."

"Agreed," says Steve. "And I should be the first one in after that. If there's poison gas we haven't picked up on, it'll do me the least damage and give us the chance to evacuate."

"Thor too," Nat chimes in. "You shouldn't go in alone."

"We also need sentries guarding the spurs while we tackle the vault," Maria continues. "Since this is all happening underground, there doesn't seem much use for Wilson, Barnes or Barton on rooftops."

Darcy watches the hesitation flicker over Steve's face. He doesn't want Bucky down there, not if they are going to come face to face with Rumlow, but to admit to any kind of worry might get Bucky yanked off the team. "Only after we've done a full sweep en masse."

Maria nods, and the rest of the mission is arranged: contingency plan after contingency plan. It's not beyond Hydra to spring something truly unforeseen and hideous on them, but they have the best team going. Tony and Bruce won't be joining them, but neither considers themselves a full time Avenger, and tunnels aren't their ideal territory. Vision will return from his initial sweep to bring up the rear with Wanda and Rhodey, ensuring no one can get the drop on them from behind.

Darcy treks to the quinjet launchpad to wave them off, something she wouldn't normally do, but Steve needs the sounding board as he retreats from the conference room.

"I don't like one bit of this," he admits. "I wouldn't put it past him to have laced the buildings above with explosives and drop them on our heads."

"The good news is, I think most of you would survive that," says Darcy, and she's not sure if it's as comforting as she intends. "Vision definitely will, and he'd be the one tripping any switches."

Bucky is waiting at the foot of the quinjet ramp, his back ramrod straight. Despite being perfectly still, Darcy can sense a nervous energy fizzing around him. She'd offer a comforting hug, except every inch of him seems to have a weapon attached to it, and that's just the ones she can see.

"Listen, you've all got this, and I've got your backs," she says. "Also, this isn't in the official mission plan, but if you happen to put Rumlow out of his misery, no one's going to weep over it."

"Quite right," says Thor, lifting Mjolnir high. "Let us go crush another of Hydra's heads beneath our heels!"

There's a collective rolling of eyes as they head up the ramp. Darcy doesn't wait for the jet to lift off, power walking back to the ops room and her station.

They land the jet in an empty parking lot a few streets away and stick to alleyways to reach the empty store. Dusk is falling, but it's not going to make a lot of difference to the mission. It doesn't even make Darcy's job harder, because she can switch to infra-red and pick up body heat signatures. She keeps a firm eye on Bucky's tracker, a blue spot amongst the red currently clustered in the basement. They have three separate people monitoring Vision as he does his sweep, all scrutinizing the footage he beams back to them directly from his eyes. Once that sweep is complete, the entire team storms into the tunnels, working in pairs and trios to ensure they're clear.

The 'all clear' message comes in from everyone, and Darcy concentrates once more on Bucky, now left alone at one end of a tunnel. She gets a visual from the little cameras swooping around, and he's still once more, but it's a different kind of stillness. There's no nervousness, just pure focus, his hand steady as he aims his gun down the dark tunnel.

Something's different in the next sighting. He's trembling. He's switched the weapon to his left hand, which is as steady as ever, but his right hand is tapping against his thigh, and sweat is beaded on his forehead. She knows it's not the temperature down there causing that.

She takes control of the camera, sending it cautiously closer, not wanting to spook him. He isn't moving, but even in the dark she can see the whites of his eyes. He's lost in his head.

She turns on her mic. "Bucky?" It's not how she's meant to address him during a mission, but she's going for the gentle approach. He doesn't respond, but in her earpiece there's a flurry of activity from inside the vault itself.

"It's clear," Steve announces. "No sign of Rumlow, but the doctor's here."

"He's been dead a while," says Nat.

They're all on edge now, knowing Rumlow's led them here on purpose, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Bucky?" Darcy tries again. He shudders at the sound of her voice, then turns and begins walking up the tunnel, towards the vault. "Bucky, you need to get back in position." When he ignores her, she opens a channel to Steve. "Bucky's heading towards you. He's not good."

There's silence, but she can hear the rustling of movement as the people in the vault shift positions. When Steve speaks, it's not to her. "Do not shoot him. Let me handle him."

They all think Bucky's been triggered, that somehow down here Rumlow has got to him. But nothing Darcy saw or heard could account for that.

She's watching two camera feeds: a rear view of Bucky heading towards the vault, and the tense team inside, their focus on the tunnel entrance. Bucky's stride isn't purposeful, it's hesitant steps, like he's still lost in his head. "Steve, I don't think he's the soldier. It's something else."

It's obvious the moment Bucky steps into the vault that she's right. He stares around the room in horror, drops his gun, then backs up against the wall, fingers lacing into his hair and tugging hard. He's groaning, long and low, but the heaving in his chest warns of an impending panic attack.

"Get him out of there, Steve," Darcy yells, but Steve's already in motion. Sam has come running too, and they're torn between calming him down or getting him moving. It's Steve who makes the call to remove him from the vault, lifting him in his arms and sprinting away.

The rest of the team have the pair encircled, moving quickly to make sure there's no ambush ahead. From what Sam's saying, by the time they reach the quinjet it's become a full-blown panic attack, but the change of location should help calm in.

"This was deliberate," Darcy says to Nat. "Something happened down there and Rumlow knew. He led us there just to trigger Bucky. _Bastard_."

Nat's response is a string of Russian curse words—or what Darcy assumes are curse words. "A bullet is too good for him," she says when she finally switches back to English. "I'd like to see how long he lasts without his mask."

"Just get Bucky home."

Darcy wants to head straight to the landing pad and wait, but Maria intercepts her before she leaves, taking her to a quiet corner.

"I knew you and Barnes were friendly," she begins, arms folded, and Darcy wants the ground to swallow her. She's probably sabotaged everything she's been working towards. "I didn't realize how close. I can't sanction you being a handler for someone you're involved with."

"We—we're not involved," Darcy says quietly, like it makes any difference.

"Not yet." There's something akin to pity in her expression after Darcy's reply. "Look, I'm not going to discipline you. You did your job tonight, and you did it well, but I can't have you working future missions with Barnes on them."

Darcy lets out a long breath in relief. "I understand." She does. She's known this could happen all along. Maria doesn't know the worst of it—if she did, she'd have no choice but to discipline Darcy.

Maria lets her go, and Darcy arrives at the pad in time for the jet to land, watching the ramp lower with trepidation. She sees legs first, Steve not even waiting for the ramp to stop moving before he's stomping down it. Bucky's next to him, Steve's hand on his shoulder. He's upright and moving under his own steam, which is a blessing, even if he looks ashen. He's been stripped down, all the Kevlar and weapons removed, so on his upper half he only wears a tank top.

She doesn't run to him, but it doesn't matter. Steve comes to a standstill a few feet away from her, and Bucky…doesn't. He walks right up to her, grabs her and pulls her to him, arms like a vice around her, burying his face in her hair.

It knocks the wind out of her, being pressed so suddenly and so tightly into his torso, but she doesn't complain. She can still feel the panicky, thready edge to his breathing as his chest moves against hers. Bucky needs this comfort.

She raises her eyes to where Steve is waiting, hovering beside them. He shakes his head at whatever question he sees in her gaze, and rests his hand back on Bucky's shoulder.

"Let's get you inside," he says. Bucky's grip on Darcy loosens, and she takes the opportunity to worm her way out of his embrace, though she's careful not to lose contact with him. They move, leaving the rest of the team to head to debrief, and all the while Bucky has a hand on her arm, or resting on her back, or his arm round her waist. She's his anchor to the world, keeping him from sinking back into his head and whatever hell he found there.

She only realizes that she's never actually been in Bucky's quarters when she settles onto the sofa next to him. They're the same layout as hers, but far more spartan.

Steve doesn't sit down. "I need to go report in. Will you..?"

"Yeah, I'll stay," she replies. Bucky still hasn't spoken, and she's rubbing up and down his arm soothingly.

"Call me if he gets worse, or if his breathing picks up, that button—" he points to one in a panel on the wall "—calls the med team in. He didn't want to go to them, but don't let him talk you out of it if he needs them."

She nods understanding, and Steve dithers for another minute before leaving. Bucky's gaze is fixed on the carpet, but his eyelids keep dipping. Now the adrenaline is working its way out of his system, he looks exhausted.

"Maybe you should try and sleep," she suggests. He nods, but when she rises, intending to lead him to the bedroom, he stops her with an arm over her knees. Instead, he leans back into the sofa cushions, pulling her with him so she's tucked into his side. There's a blanket slung over the back, which she tugs down to wrap around them. She'll nap with him, until Steve comes back.

She keeps her breathing slow and steady, hoping he'll match it, and drifts off in his arms.


	9. Chapter 9

**You may need comfort food and/or alcohol for this chapter. If you have small, cute animals to pet, please have them to hand.**

* * *

Darcy doesn't wake up in her own bed. She knows that as soon as sleep slips away from her, the sudden step into consciousness made more jarring by the unfamiliar surroundings. Not least of these is the firm body pressed against her back, and the arm around her waist holding her tight to that body.

She doesn't need to open her eyes to know who it is.

She opens them anyway, knowing she'll never get back to sleep now. They're still on Bucky's sofa, the empty coffee table right in front of her. Somehow during the night they've slid onto their sides. He's spooning her, his breath tickling across the top of her head where she's tucked under his chin.

Darcy doesn't ever want to move. She's content to lie here forever, maybe arch into him and remove what little space there is between them.

On the other hand, she wants to run away as fast as she can. Only the memory of how wrecked Bucky was last night keeps her from bolting while he's asleep. She needs to make sure he's okay to be left alone before she goes.

Steve apparently never returned during the night, and she never left. She isn't sure what time it is, but the light filtering through the blinds hints at mid-morning. She should be at work but she has her suspicions that Steve has covered for her. Instead, she settles in, waiting for some indication that Bucky is waking up.

Her bladder gives out on her first, since Bucky doesn't seem to have any intention of being conscious. She clenches and hopes she can wait, but it will not be ignored.

When she moves, trying to peel Bucky's arm away, he shifts and holds her tighter, muttering something into her hair. She grips his arm more firmly, wedging her hand under it so she can lever it away from her body—thankful it's not his left arm—and then has to contend with the blanket wrapped around them. By the time she's free and sprinting for the bathroom, she knows he's awake, but she doesn't look back.

She uses the facilities, washes her hands, then helps herself to some mouthwash. She also tries to sort out the mess that is her hair, but without a comb it's about as easy as calming the fluttering in her stomach. Yesterday's mascara is smeared under her eyes, so she takes a moment to wash it away. Her glasses must be out in the tangle of blankets somewhere. She hopes they survived the night.

Before she heads out, she sends Steve a quick text. _He's awake. Can you come by? I need to get to the office._

Then she takes a deep breath and steps back into the living room. Bucky's sat up, though he still looks half-asleep, and he's rubbing at his face. He looks…snuggly. Every inch of her wants to curl up under the blanket with him again.

Her glasses are on the floor by his feet. She crosses the room to put them on, then scoots back so she's not looming over him.

"How are you feeling?" she asks.

He grunts, looking at her through the hair hanging in his face. "Better for sleeping. Thanks for staying."

"It's nothing," she reassures him. "Are you going to see someone today?" He needs to talk about what happened last night. It was clearly something to do with his time in Hydra, and he's often reluctant to talk about that with her.

"Yeah, I'll get something booked in." He stares at her, and all the sleepiness has been chased from his eyes. He looks like he's weighing something up, making a decision.

"I have to go, but Steve's on his way," she says, trying to find a balance between concern and cheerfulness,

"Okay. I'll come see when you finish work."

Somehow, she doesn't think this is going to be a simple catch-up.

She swings by her quarters for a shower and change of clothes, then heads to the office. It's ten-thirty by the time she arrives, and her inbox is already groaning under the strain. She's barely got started when Nat arrives.

"How is he?" she asks.

"Better than he was last night."

There's no attempt to tease Darcy, even though there's no way Nat doesn't know she was in his quarters all night. It's a testament to the state he was in after the mission.

"Good. I think I figured out why Rumlow led us to that vault."

"Bucky's been there before."

Nat nods and drops a manila folder onto Darcy's desk, opening it to a particular photo: a foreboding black-and-white shot of what appears to be a dentist's chair with sinister additions around the head area. Darcy winces. She's heard of this chair.

"This shot was taken somewhere else," Nat explains, "but we know Pierce was seen in the vicinity of that bank several times. He had the arrogance to use the front door rather than the tunnels."

"You think they kept Bucky down there?"

"I don't think he was stored there, no, but it was probably used to brief him on missions Pierce had a personal hand in."

Stored. Like a piece of equipment, packed away until it was useful again.

"I bet Rumlow saw him," she says

"So do I. It would also make more sense that when Bucky headed out on a mission, he went through the tunnels. If this was the place they held him before that last mission, when his conditioning was already slipping, he probably retains a memory of it."

So Rumlow led them down to those tunnels, hoping Bucky had enough time to retrieve the memory and suffer through it.

"Christ. Nat, do me a favor, if you get to Rumlow first, shoot him in the balls, okay? I don't care what you do to him after that, but tell him that bullet had my name on it."

Nat nods. "I have some other creative ideas, but we aren't supposed to torture people. We're the good guys." For a moment she seems to regret that. Darcy thinks she does too.

"Bucky thought he remembered something in Chicago too. He wanted you to check the file, but I don't know if he got around to asking."

"Yeah, there was a mission in Chicago. In the eighties. It…well, it didn't go smoothly. The notes indicate they had to subdue Bucky and expend a lot of effort getting him back to a pliant state. I don't think it was pleasant. It sounds like his conditioning started to break down, and I don't doubt Rumlow was aware of the incident."

"Shit. Nat?"

"Yes?"

"Shoot him in both balls."

* * *

Bucky arrives at her quarters with Chinese food in styrofoam containers. "I thought we could eat here. Talk." His eyes are solemn, thoughtful.

Her stomach has settled into a hard knot. There's a prickling down her spine, like a chill wind passing by, and for a moment she has perfect clarity. Even if she can't see what's going to happen, something is coming, something powerful and probably painful. It's written all over Bucky's face that he's not going to dance around whatever he's here to say.

"How did your day go?" she asks, ushering him inside and trying to push the feeling away. He crosses to place the containers on her counter, and she busies herself looking for plates.

"It went," he replies with a shrug. "I spent a lot of time talking things through, which helped me gain some clarity." He doesn't make a move to start dishing the food out, instead setting the plates down and turning to face Darcy. She stops rummaging through her cutlery drawer, and takes a breath, trying to center herself. She can see he's doing the same.

"The food can wait," he mutters, taking a step closer so there's barely a foot of space between them. Just close enough that it doesn't hurt her neck to stare up at him. She can feel the pulse in her throat.

His eyes are dark, mostly pupil, and he licks his lips before speaking again. She tracks the movement with her gaze, unconsciously, and she knows he notices. How could he not, when he's so focused on her?

"I know you want to avoid a relationship," he begins. "Because of your soulmate." There's a bitter edge to that last word, envy and distaste rolled together. "I knew, even before I heard you mention it, that you were trying to keep distance between us. You felt the pull and tried to put barriers up. I guess I understand, now, but I need you to know it doesn't have to be that way."

He reaches out for her hand, curling it between his and pulling it towards his chest. The contrast between warm, calloused skin and cool metal vies for attention with the increasing tempo of her heart, a frantic drumbeat in her ears.

"I might not be _him_. I might not be the man the universe gave your words to, and honestly, I'm glad, because anyone who could walk away from you doesn't deserve the privilege. But you don't have to shut yourself away and think there's nothing but loneliness coming for you. Not when you've shown _me_ that it doesn't have to be that way."

Somehow, he's inched closer, and his head is bent towards hers, his hair forming a curtain around their faces. All she can see is those fierce eyes, the scant irises turned quicksilver in the dim light, and she has to concentrate on breathing.

"I try not to think about the future, but when I do, you're in every version of it that I want," he continues, and she has to close her eyes, because for a moment the knot in her belly, all that concentrated pain, shoves its way outward. Her heart squeezes, as good as if Bucky had taken it in his metal fist and gripped tight, and she shouldn't have opened her door to him, she shouldn't have stayed in the facility, she should have fled as soon as she realized how much the universe wanted to hurt her.

His palm on her cheek forces her eyes open, and he's radiating concern. "I want to make you happy, Darcy," he confesses, brow furrowed as he takes in her body language. "I can't, won't, make empty promises about always being good at that, but I want to try, and try, and try, until I get it right. I want to make you forget that other asshole even exists. I want to make you love me, like I love you."

She's crying when he kisses her, a soft brush of lips before he rests his forehead on her own. She doesn't think she can speak around the tightness in her throat, but somehow she manages. "Your words…" It's a rasp, as shredded as she feels.

"I don't care!" he growls, wiping at her tears with gentle, reverent thumbs. "They aren't important."

"They aren't mine!" She flings the words out between sobs, and something about the desperation they're soaked in makes Bucky still. He only blinks—once, twice, three times—as he stares at her, but she can see the gears moving behind his eyes, the pieces slotting together. It calms her, inexplicably stemming the tide of tears, even though she knows things are about to get worse.

"You never told me who he was. I-I never asked." He takes a shuddery breath. "Where are your words?"

She takes a step away, though his hands don't drop from her face, to lift the hem of her shirt and reveal the silvery scrawl across her hip. He reads them with dawning horror. She looks away from him, can't bear to look at him as he processes what it all means.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asks, and there's so much emotion in there she can't even begin to pick it apart: hurt and guilt and anger, and everything she wanted to protect him from.

She drops the fabric and shakes her head, dislodging his fingers from her skin. "Because I'm not yours, so it didn't matter. You've got someone else out there waiting for you."

He stalks away, rage simmering from him as she watches him move in her peripheral vision. He looks like he's after something he can smash, or put his fist through, but this is her space and he controls the urge, pulling the anger back inside, spitting it out in words alone.

"So you'd rather spend months _lying_ to me?"

"I've _never_ lied to you," she protests. "I haven't told you everything, but this is _my_ life. My burden. I got to choose how I dealt with it."

"That's great— _you_ get to choose. I get other people making decisions for me, again. I spent decades with other people controlling everything about my life, and you went and decided this without even including me in the process." Suddenly, the anger's gone. He's back in front of her, expression open and vulnerable, fingers in her hair. "I am done with that part of my life," he insists, the fierce words a vow. "No one gets to control it or shut me out. Not you, not the universe. _I want you._ Destiny can go fuck itself."

She pulls away again, until she's backed up against the door. "And when they turn up? The love of your life, your perfect partner?"

"Not interested. I will get these words cut out of my skin if I have to."

"What difference will that make? You know what they are. You'll _know,_ just like I did. Even if you think you can run from it, one day you'll realize I'm not enough anymore. Like you said, you can't make any promises. One day you'll be gone, and it will be just be me again."

He closes in. "Please, Darcy…"

She puts out a hand to keep him at bay. "It's not your decision alone to make. It's mine too, and I already decided. I'm sorry if I didn't involve you in that, but trust me when I say I've got the shittier end of the deal. I can't open my arms to you and hope for the best. I can't. And it wouldn't work anyway—I'd spend every minute with you looking over my shoulder, waiting for someone better to come along."

She's calm by the time she's finished speaking. It's fed by the hollowness inside her, the ringing emptiness in her bones now she's said her piece. She watched as the conviction in her words reached him, settled in him, and destroyed the hope he'd carried all the way here.

"I love you," he repeats, like it will change anything, and Darcy wishes it would.

"I think you should go," she whispers, fumbling with the door handle at her side.

He nods, backing away enough for her to open it and let him pass by. He doesn't look at her as he leaves, and it's only when she closes the door behind him that she realizes she never said the words back.

It doesn't matter. It would only hurt him more.

Darcy leans against the locked door for what could be minutes, or hours. She only knows time has moved on because of the utter blackness outside her windows. Bucky isn't coming back, and she thinks this is one chapter of her life slowly closing, the pages turning around her. Tomorrow, she needs to seriously think about the next one, but for now it's only her and the cold Chinese food on her counter.

* * *

There are two days of numbness, then there are hands shaking her awake in the middle of the night. She blinks up through layers of sleep and gauzy darkness to find Nat crouching over her, distraught in a way Darcy never thought she was capable of being.

"What's up?" she slurs, fumbling for her glasses.

"It's Bucky," Nat pants. "The mission—he…"

Darcy sits up, shoving Nat away so she can move. She hadn't even know there was a mission tonight. "Did he have another attack?"

"No. Rumlow got to him. Darcy, he's gone."

* * *

 **To be clear, by 'he's gone' I do NOT mean that Bucky is dead.**


	10. Chapter 10

**This is a very long chapter, but I didn't want to split it into two, mainly because I think it would have been obvious where the story was heading, but also because you would've got a short chapter that was all heartbreak.**

 **Thanks to bewilderebeest and magic-in-us on Tumblr for their help with crafting a suitable Russian phrase.**

* * *

Darcy's out of bed, pulling clothing on and grabbing her glasses, without really deciding to move. She's not in full control of her body, watching it happen from the back of her own head, the adrenaline taking control. Meanwhile, Nat keeps talking.

"It was just an ordinary mission, nothing to do with Rumlow. We thought it was an old Hydra archive, one an informant conveniently gave up a few days ago. Bucky was covering us, until there was a small explosion, a distraction, so we didn't notice until there was static coming from his comms link. When Sam went up to get a look, he was gone. We ran the footage and it looks like Rumlow went up there personally and cornered him—used some trigger word we didn't know about—he just crashed."

"Who was Bucky's handler?" Darcy asks as they leave her quarters, power walking in the direction of the ops room.

"It doesn't matter, it wasn't their fault. They were trying to cover three people at once, and two of these people were in the middle of the explosion."

She's right, but Nat's wise in not passing on their name to Darcy, because she's ready to launch a world of pain in someone's direction. If it can't be Rumlow or any of the shitstains from Hydra, she will find another target.

"Steve's pissed you were pulled from missions and he's blaming Maria."

Darcy shakes her head. She recognizes the parallel Nat is probably trying to point out to her. "She was right to do it. Besides—does he not know?" Surely if he was aware of what had happened between her and Bucky, he wouldn't still expect her to act as his handler.

She doesn't ask Nat if she knew. It would be wasting her breath.

"He knew something was up with Bucky, but didn't know it was related to you."

"Do you—" Her steps falter. "Do you think he wasn't as careful as he could have been?" It's a horrific thought, that he might have been so distracted by his personal life that it gave Rumlow a window of opportunity. That somehow she might be partially responsible for this.

"I think Rumlow lured us there on purpose and had this whole thing planned for a long time," Nat says firmly. "No one is responsible for this but him."

They've reached the ops room, which is in chaos, and Nat ushers Darcy over to the small cluster of people near the Mission Control desk. Maria, Sam, and Steve are waiting beside it, debating something. They greet her with varying degrees of exhaustion, and repeat what Nat's already told her, fleshing out some of the details.

She even gets to watch the footage, and listen to playback of Bucky's audio feed, like this week isn't already the worst one she's ever lived through.

They'd sent one of the tiny floating cameras from the bank vault up to monitor him, just in case. Gold star to the handler for making sure they had some visual on him. Not that Darcy wants to see it unfold, and yet she can't turn away. It hurts to see him, the first time since he left her quarters the other day, especially since she's still drawn to him. The way he moves across the rooftop—fluid, powerful, in control—makes her chest tight.

Nothing happens for long minutes, not until there's a blast of light. The explosion, happening off camera, though Bucky's attention is all on it. He's tense, utterly still.

The prevailing theory is that the noise from the blast must have covered Rumlow's approach. He moves heavily but Bucky doesn't react until he's right behind him on the rooftop. He says something—something which isn't picked up—and Bucky slumps like a puppet whose strings have been cut.

"If Rumlow wasn't wearing the mask, I'd be able to lipread what he said," Nat says, "but with it…"

"I don't get it," Darcy replies. "Why can't we hear the words? I know the camera doesn't have a mic, but Bucky's headset should have picked it up."

They turn the footage on again, syncing the audio with it, rather than running them separately. This time, it's obvious the audio file cuts short during the explosion, descending into crackling.

"It doesn't make sense," says Steve. "No one else's did that and we were right in the middle of it."

"I don't think it's that simple." Nat's scrutinizing the footage of Rumlow approaching Bucky. "There is no way Rumlow should have got that close, but Bucky doesn't even blink."

"You think they were running interference?" Darcy asks.

"They could have intercepted the signal and replaced it with their own. That was what the explosion was distracting us all from."

"Alright, I'll get IT on it," says Maria. "See if they can prove that theory, and either trace the new signal or find our lost audio."

"Is that going to help get him back?" Steve asks.

"It's a lead, and we should be as thorough as we can be," Maria replies.

She catches Darcy up on what they've already done, and what the agents in the ops room are currently laboring over. They've scoured surveillance footage until they located Rumlow and henchmen carrying Bucky away to a waiting SUV, then tracked that through the streets until it was abandoned at a helicopter launch pad. The helicopter only took them to an airstrip outside the city limits, and now they're scrutinizing all flights which left it since. They've also had a team out to search the airstrip.

"We're following up all of the flight plans—there weren't many at that time of night—to check they're legitimate, as well as getting airspace radar records to see if there were any unrecorded flights."

"What about if they didn't leave by air?" Darcy asks.

"Good question." Maria turns to a sleepy-looking Sarah. "We need to check the footage of all vehicles leaving that airstrip. I need to know when, and I need to know where they went."

Sarah nods and switches tasks.

There's nothing more Darcy can do, so she logs and joins in scouring surveillance footage. It's thankless toil, but it someone has to do it, and that won't be Steve or any of the Avengers. They're going to go kicking down doors.

At some point she sleeps: not in her own bed, but curled up on a sofa with Nat in the corner of the ops room. She's too exhausted to dream.

The following day passes in a haze of caffeine and grainy images. She listens to leads being discounted around her: the flights out were not run by Hydra, the vehicles that left the airstrip didn't go anywhere special. They've sent people out to interrogate the people on those flights and in those vehicles, they've stripped down the airplanes looking for evidence and come up empty-handed. Darcy has stared at camera recordings of those planes landing and emptying out until her eyeballs refused to function anymore.

She sleeps that night in her own bed, but this time she dreams. Her head plays a loop of Bucky slumping, like someone had ripped the life from him, and then him in that awful contraption, screaming for them to let him go. She's not much rested when she returns to the ops room in the morning.

It takes three days for IT to confirm that their theory about the audio was correct. Actually, it takes three days for Tony Stark to do it, and while he can't get them a recording of what was being fed to Bucky through his earpiece, he can get them the end of the actual audio from the rooftop. Rumlow's voice is muffled by the mask, but it's enough for Nat to recognize the words he's speaking.

"Отбой, сержант," she repeats. "Basically, 'Light's out, Sergeant'."

"They probably repeated it to him on a loop in his earpiece," Maria theorizes, "but as his conditioning had degraded so much, it only dropped him in person."

"At least we can get it wiped from his programming when we get him back," Steve proclaims. Beyond that, it doesn't help them. The signal which transmitted directly to Bucky was done locally, probably from the SUV, and it's a dead end. Another one.

Nat can't stand to be confined to the facility. She and Steve go out in the field, each following separate paths. Nat is stalking Hydra through the shadows, while Steve is smashing his way through their known bases and personnel.

The hours blend together so much that Darcy doesn't realize a week has almost passed until Maria sends her home—she's worked too many hours and needs to take a day's break. Darcy doesn't know what to do with the free time. She notices how quiet it is when she shuts the door to her quarters, but there's no point going to the Avenger's common room—no one will be there. Instead, she curls up on her sofa and channel surfs until the TV turns blurry. It's not tiredness, it's tears.

Friday must summon Jane, because suddenly she's there, rocking Darcy in her arms.

"It'll be okay," she soothes, and Darcy clings to the lie, because no matter what happens—whether they get him back or not—she can't see how it will be.

Darcy wishes she could say her breakdown provides clarity and gets it out of her system. Instead, she's still running on fumes, repulsed by food despite the constant ache in her belly—an ache which isn't hunger. Nightmares still plague her sleep. Nothing will get better until they find Bucky, not when they know what Rumlow will be doing to him.

Her one small crumb of comfort is that they won't kill him. That's too simple, a clean blow against Steve. Taking back their asset and using him against the Avengers is the perfect way to make Steve suffer, to make it _linger_.

In her frustration at how easily they disappeared, Darcy goes back to the very beginning, to the events of that night. She personally follows the SUV out of the city on the footage, goes over the helicopter logs and double checks that it's _definitely_ the same one which landed at that airstrip. She also makes sure the flight time couldn't have allowed any deviation to another landing place. There are holes in the surveillance footage from the airstrip, ones Hydra exploited, so she doesn't see who exits the helicopter or where they go afterward. For all she knows, they parachuted out and left the pilot to make his own way out of there.

She pulls up a map of an area around the airstrip, making sure there aren't any other roads they missed—unlikely, she knows, but she _has_ to check—or if they could even have left in an off-road vehicle. Unlikely, because it's a thickly wooded area. Satellite view shows a few gray rectangles in a sea of green, with a blue line cutting through nearby.

"Maria," she calls, "did we ever check the waterways?"

There's a flurry of activity as it turns out the river is passable by boat and actually carries a lot of traffic. It gives them a probable route, but with no footage on the river and no record of who's traveled on it, it doesn't narrow things down much.

"I think it might do," says Nat when they pass the knowledge on. "Bucky wouldn't have stayed down long, and when he woke it was going to be harder to get him back down. Plus we know Rumlow can't travel for too long without needing oxygen. Their destination had to be relatively close. Even if they didn't stay long, it will give us a lead."

Teams are sent out to search the length of the river, which feels like an impossible task to Darcy. Even if they get a clue to an onward location, it will probably only lead to _another_ clue and another destination. They'll be chasing their tails until Bucky re-emerges as _their_ weapon.

Will he even remember her?

The thought hits her hard, and _this_ is her moment of clarity. Of course he won't remember her. This, this is the punchline of the universe's grand joke: she cannot be Bucky's soulmate because he is destined not to know who she is.

Maria doesn't ask questions when Darcy submits her request for a transfer to Manhattan, but signs the paperwork. It's probably the dark rings under her eyes that convince Maria to get Darcy out of direct ops. She's also kind enough to agree to let her stay until Bucky's home, but only if that's within the next month. Otherwise, she's gone, only peripherally involved in the mission and kept up to date on its progress.

She's glad Steve isn't around to hear about her decision.

* * *

It's three weeks since Bucky was taken, and her health is suffering for it. Pepper has ruled that she can only work five days out of seven, a maximum of fifty hours within those five days, and she must see a counselor to remain on active duty. It takes an intervention from Thor to stop Darcy being transferred to Manhattan immediately, but even with that Darcy knows it won't be long until she shatters and has to go.

She's following another lead, after remembering what led them to the bank vault in D.C.: electricity usage. Both Rumlow's treatment and the equipment required to program Bucky need a lot of it, so maybe if she looks for spikes in places where they shouldn't be, she'll find _something._ There are a surprising number of 'empty' warehouses along the river's edge which turn out to be drug operations when Steve bulldozes his way into them. He's being reckless, in his own way, reluctant to wait for back-up, even if Maria keeps reminding him that he's not actually bullet-proof.

It's the approach he takes with Nat's newest potential lead. She's been gathering gossip from the underworld—sometimes with stealth, sometimes with fear and pain—and it's led her to a crumbling industrial unit a mile from the river bank in a city downstream. There's a telltale surge in power usage which gets Darcy's hopes up even when she knows she should crush them.

"It was Hydra, but we already cleaned it out," Nat says as she calls it into mission control. "I remember coming here."

"Why would they go back?" Darcy wonders.

"Could be a double bluff," Nat suggests. Steve doesn't care. He overrides Maria and insists on taking a small team in. Since Nat's already on the ground, she agrees to be part of it, a moderating edge if she can be.

They send the tiny cameras in so the ops team can follow events, but the first person in is Nat. She's convinced Steve that an element of surprise is a better approach than a full-frontal assault.

Darcy watches her drop from the ceiling and land on Rumlow's shoulders. He tosses her away, but not before her Widow's Bites have fried the mask. She's up and running before anyone can take aim at her, dodging behind the crates lining the space, and then they're distracted by the arrival of Steve and the cavalry.

Bucky's in the middle of all this, strapped to the chair, topless and weaponless. He's Nat's destination. By frying Rumlow's mask, she's reduced his capacity to issue commands and knock Bucky out again. Instead, she emerges from behind the chair to tear loose the straps keeping Bucky in place, careful to stay out of reach of his metal arm.

He's agitated by the commotion, on his feet as soon as he realizes he's free, and immediately goes for Nat. He's like a wild animal, but a wild animal who knows how to match her blow for blow. She aims a kick for his head, misses, and is tossed onto her back. Darcy winces but if Nat's winded she doesn't show it, springing back to her feet from her prone position and keeping out of his reach.

Steve's shield goes whipping past him and he staggers, blinking like he's taken a head blow. Nat takes the opportunity to sprint away, taking the fight to one of the Hydra goons instead. He's down within seconds, her Bites eating through the men with ease. Already their number has been reduced, the attack apparently coming as a surprise, but some of them just won't stay down.

Bucky's stalking through the carnage without a care for the bullets whipping past him. He pauses above the body of a fallen Hydra agent, stooping to retrieve his gun. Nat yells a warning to Steve, who's across the room in a flash, ripping it from his hands.

"No, Buck. This isn't your fight," they hear through Steve's mouthpiece.

He blinks at Steve, but only for a moment, before he's lashing out again, coming up against the shield.

"Come on, Bucky, we've done this before. _You know me_."

Bucky doesn't stop his assault, not until Steve staggers and falls to his knees. Rumlow is behind him, his face a mess of scars. Their circling led them close to where he lay, and though Darcy can't see what he's done, there's trickle of blood coming from Steve's mouth.

There's silence in the ops room.

Bucky's stopped moving too, his chest heaving as he turns his attention to Rumlow. His gaze is not friendly.

He wrenches the shield from Steve's grasp and leaps, his boots hitting Rumlow's chest and knocking him back into the ground with enough force that Darcy can see his ribs give way. A bloody knife drops from Rumlow's hand and goes clattering across the ground. Then the shield scythes through the air, into Rumlow's skull, until it bites the ground.

Rumlow goes slack and Bucky steps away, pulling the shield with him. There isn't much left of Rumlow's head.

Nat comes up beside Bucky and whispers something to him. He crumples to his knees, and she catches him before he hits the floor, laying him down gently. Then she turns her attention to Steve, putting pressure on his knife wound.

"We got him," she announces through her mouthpiece. "He's coming home."

Darcy slumps over her desk, dimly aware that someone is sobbing. It's when she feels a reassuring hand on her back, rubbing circles, that she realizes it's her.

Sam helps Nat provide medical treatment until the clean-up crew arrive with a quinjet to give them a ride home. The rest of the team remain behind to destroy the chair. Steve's wound is grave, even for him, and it's a tense time in the ops room until they receive word the jet has touched down.

Two people are stretchered to the medical bay, and Darcy wastes no time in rushing over. Both are unconscious, but only one is critical. Bucky has been strapped down and locked in a room designed to keep Bruce's alter ego contained, at least until he wakes up and they can assess him. Steve is in surgery with a punctured lung.

"Honestly, they probably should let him sleep it off and heal himself," is Helen's opinion on that.

Darcy finds herself standing vigil outside Bucky's room, despite the fact that he sleeps on for hours. Maria comes to her at one point.

"He's back," she says. "You ready to go?"

"Just…give me a couple of days."

"Alright. You need a few days rest anyway. We all do. Tell Friday when you're ready and we can get your move arranged."

Sam and Nat join her when Steve is out of surgery and resting.

"How long do you think he'll be out of it?" Darcy asks.

"It can't be much longer."

"And what then?" Darcy's staring through the glass panel into the room where Bucky is 'sleeping'. He looks peaceful, at least, despite the restraints.

"The conditioning was already breaking down," Sam says. "Look at the way he took down Rumlow—he might not have immediately recognized us as friendlies, but he didn't see himself on Hydra's side either."

Nat nods in agreement. "Bucky had come so far that three weeks of trying to re-establishing programming which had been pretty comprehensively stripped away wasn't going to be very successful. I think it'll be quicker to undo their hard work this time around."

"I hope you're right," says Darcy. But there's that niggling feeling inside, that notion that she's reached the end of the line with Bucky, and she can't shake it.

Steve's awake first, despite the fact that he's had enough drugs to sink an elephant. They take turns sitting with him, trying to keep him distracted from the pain.

"He awake yet?" is the first question out of his mouth when Darcy arrives with a massive bunch of grapes.

"No, but the anesthetist is wondering if we can get a trigger word programmed into you which will keep you down."

Steve rolls his eyes, then narrows them at her. "Have _you_ slept yet?"

"I've napped." On the cold, plastic chair outside Bucky's containment room, with the memory of Rumlow's head splitting like a watermelon jerking her awake before she could reach deep sleep. She wonders whose job it is to clean Steve's shield.

They talk about inconsequential things while he munches on the grapes, but there's a sense of peace in him she's not seen for a while. It's mission accomplished, at least until Hydra rears another ugly head.

"I know Maria thought she was doing the right thing when she pulled you working missions with Bucky," Steve says, "but I'm going to insist you're reinstated. When he goes back out in the field—if he wants to—he needs someone watching him to make sure this kind of thing can't happen again."

"Steve…" she begins, grasping for the right words, before realizing they don't exist. "I'm not going to be here. I'm going to Manhattan."

He frowns, pushing himself to sit upright even though it clearly pains him. "Is Maria behind this? I can talk to her—"

"No, Steve. This was my choice. I asked to go." She can't look him in the eye as she says it, tries to push him back down even though it's like shoving at a slab of marble. The frown deepens.

"But he _needs_ you."

She shakes her head. "No, he doesn't. He needs uncomplicated friendship and a handler who won't be distracted by life outside the mission. I can give you names of people I trust to do that role, but it's not me anymore."

His jaw is tight, his face radiating the disapproval that he does so well. She steps away and sighs.

"I'll say goodbye before I leave. Do you want me to send Sam through?"

He doesn't respond and she shuffles out of the room, breathing deeply when the door shuts behind her and the weight of his disappointment is lifted. She always knew he would react like this, though it doesn't make it any easier to bear.

She returns to Bucky's room, to find Sam and Nat staring through the glass with concerned expressions. She follows their gaze to find Bucky, awake and untied, pacing the small space.

"When did he wake?" she asks. What she really means is _'Why didn't you come get me?'_

"Not long ago," Nat replies. "I went in and did it." At Darcy's questioning stare, she explains, "I knew there had to be a phrase to reverse the original command, so I tried a few until one worked."

"He wasn't really sleeping," Sam cuts in. "More like stasis."

"So why didn't you wait until I got back?"

"We weren't sure what we'd be waking up," says Nat. "I didn't want you to be around if it was messy."

Darcy crosses to the window, and the fact that Bucky doesn't notice the movement means it must be a one-way mirror she's looking through. She's able to watch the way he stalks the small space, muscles rippling under skin—they still haven't given him a shirt—his gaze unfocused and jumpy. She notices the black words on his upper back, and averts her eyes before she can read what they say. They don't belong to her; they're private.

Instead, she turns back to Sam and Nat. "It's him, isn't it? The Soldier, rather than Bucky?"

Sam gives a cautious nod. "For now."

"He recognized me when I woke him," Nat says. "But that might just have been from the fight before. He didn't _know_ me."

"We're going to let Steve go in first. It was Steve who broke through last time, we're going to let him try again. Beyond that, time and therapy will be our best hope. Let whatever conditioning they re-established degrade on its own."

They have the best doctors available, even if they won't get close until Bucky is calmer. He's with people who will take care of him. She's done here.

"I'm leaving," she announces. Nat doesn't even feign surprise, but Sam's shocked.

"We just got him back."

"Which is why it's the perfect time to go. He won't even know I'm gone."

"And what about when he remembers and wonders where you are?" Sam presses.

"Tell him I'm in Manhattan, though I don't think that's a question you'll have to answer."

Nat's shaking her head, making her feelings about Darcy's decision clear. "What about the rest of us?"

"You functioned fine before I came along. I need to find my own place in the world."

"Your place is here with us." Darcy turns to find Steve at the end of the corridor, dragging an IV pole beside him.

Darcy purses her lips while Nat strides up the corridor to usher Steve back to his hospital bed. "I have to go pack," she mutters, turning her back on Steve and his attempt at changing her mind using his _Captain America is disappointed with you_ face.

She's left alone for the rest of the day, and it's depressing how quickly she can pack up her life in the facility. The clothes all fit in one suitcase, her other possessions into a few cardboard boxes. Some things she decides to leave behind and gift to other people: her mind flashes briefly on Bucky's stark quarters, but she shoves the thought away while she dumps ombre candlesticks into a box with Jane's name on.

Maria emails her to let her know that Darcy will be traveling to Manhattan with her the next day. Otherwise, Darcy will have to drive herself when she's ready. It'll be the first time Darcy's actually traveled on a quinjet, but she's not excited by the prospect. Mostly she's tired—beyond tired, an exhaustion that lingers in her bones. Maybe it will be lift when she's away from the facility, maybe she will have to learn to live with it.

Nat's there in the morning, casting a resigned gaze over Darcy's stuff waiting to picked up. "Are you at least going to say goodbye to him?"

Darcy shrugs. "I don't know what good it will do."

"For your sake."

"I don't—don't know if I want to while he's like that."

"He's calmer today; he recognizes Steve, though he's not sure why. You should give it a try."

Hope swells, unbidden, and Darcy hates it, but it's unties her tongue before she can control herself. "Okay."

Nat won't let things drop as she leads her to Bucky, who's been moved to a less bombproof cell. "What will you do when you see him again? Because you probably will. Steve's at Stark Tower all the time. Even if you can find excuses to wriggle out of coming back here, your paths are bound to cross. Won't it be harder when that happens when he looks at you and doesn't even recognize you, than staying here and letting him get to know you again?"

"And end up back in the same position? No thanks."

The room Bucky's in now is bigger than yesterday, though it's still pretty basic. There's a cot fixed to the wall, and chairs bolted to the floor. A small door in one corner leads into what Darcy presumes will be a bathroom area. Only the soft decor and ample lighting makes it feel less like your average prison cell. Steve is sat on one of the chairs, apparently healed from his injuries, while Bucky's perched on the edge of his cot. Another man is sat in there with them. She can't see his face, and he isn't wearing a white coat, but she'd put money on him being a doctor of some kind.

Nat taps on the door and all three heads swivel towards it, confirming the window looking in is another one-way mirror. Steve makes his way over to guard the door while Nat opens it. He takes stock of Darcy and for a moment she thinks he's going to turn her away, but he steps aside to let her through. Bucky's attention is focused on the corridor beyond the door—she can see him plotting to make a move—but it snaps to her when the it closes.

His brows knit together as he takes her in, but there's no spark of recognition that she picks up on. Just curiosity and suspicion. There's still a hint of a cornered wild animal to him, but he's gone from lashing out to taking up as little space as possible, curling himself up against the wall. She wishes they'd give him a t-shirt.

"This is Dr Adebayo," Steve introduces. The doctor gives her a nod but doesn't rise from the chair. He doesn't appear to be taking notes, and Darcy notices the sweat patches under his arms. She supposes that the Soldier's reputation will do that to a person. She should be more concerned for herself—frightened wild animals have a tendency to lash out, and an unarmed Bucky is still a dangerous Bucky—but he looks so pitiful with his wide, skittish eyes and shallow breathing that it's hard to be so. She remembers their conversation, so many months ago, about not appearing like a threat to him, and she doubts that's changed.

"What are we calling him?" she says to Steve. She doesn't bother to lower her voice, mindful that Bucky will hear her anyway. Whispering will just raise his hackles further.

Steve shrugs and looks over the doctor.

"Is there something you'd prefer to be called?" Dr Adebayo asks, addressing Bucky, who considers the question before shaking his head.

She looks to Steve for further guidance, but he gestures for her to speak, using the most passive-aggressive hand-gesture she's ever been subjected to. Instead she faces Bucky, letting Steve drop back a few paces so she's on her own. She shoves her hands in her pockets and decides to skip the preamble.

"I guess this is goodbye."

He blinks at her, shifting slightly on the cot, and speaks for the first time.

"Those words…" He's confused again, lost in his head as he searches for some memory he's lost. "I know those words."

His reaction makes her lose her train of thought. She turns to Steve with her own confusion, but he's staring at her with his mouth gaping open.

"Sure you know those words, Buck," he says. "I used to tease you about them all the time."

She still doesn't understand what's going on, even as Bucky shuffles closer to the edge of the cot, until his feet brush the floor. He mumbles something which Darcy doesn't catch, and speaks directly to Steve. "You used to say that to me."

"I did."

She shares a bewildered look with the doctor.

"Is it true?" Bucky asks, looking between her and Steve. She can only throw an exasperated glance at Steve.

"Is what true?" she asks, but Steve opts to answer Bucky instead.

"Yeah, I think it is." The corner of his mouth is curling into a smile, even as Bucky pads towards her, and she's getting alarmed.

"What did you used to say to him?" she asks, her voice rising in pitch. Steve makes no move to keep Bucky away, and Bucky comes to a stop right in front of her, his face lit with wonder.

"I said 'Those are awful strange words for your soulmate to say'," is Steve's reply. Bucky sinks to his knees and wraps his arms around Darcy's hips, resting his head against her belly.

From this angle, she can see the silver words on the skin of his back.

* * *

 **I hope you all enjoyed Rumlow's death!**

 **There's only an epilogue to go, in which I will try to make sure everyone understands how Darcy only just became Bucky's soulmate.**


	11. Chapter 11

**I really enjoyed you all breaking my inbox with keysmashing comments. It does a writer's ego good!**

 **For now, this is the end...**

* * *

It takes a long time to persuade Bucky to get up from his knees. He seems to find comfort in being close to Darcy, so she promises that she'll stay with him, sitting on the cot.

She props herself tentatively on the edge, while he sets himself beside her, their legs pressed together from knee to hip. She can tell he wants to wrap his arm around her—he fidgets, fingers twitching as if to reach out before curling up and jerking away—but she's too stunned to give him permission.

Dr Adebayo talks to Bucky, less terrified now that the civilizing presence of his soulmate his present.

Bucky's soulmate. _Her._ It still hasn't settled in. She doesn't understand how it's possible.

The doctor asks about what Bucky remembers: who he is, things he has done, people he knows. Bucky is hesitant, the persistent questions and his inability to answer them frustrating him. She places a hand on his forearm and it seems to settle him. Dr Adebayo notices this too.

"Does Darcy's presence help?"

His brow furrows until he realizes that she is Darcy. He silently repeats her name, before nodding his head firmly.

"Why? Can you remember her?"

It takes Bucky a long time to answer, but the doctor lets the question sit there. "I feel like I know her," Bucky eventually replies. "I don't remember her, not really. Except the way she smells—that's familiar, I think."

"You trust her," Dr Adebayo prompts.

"I do," he says, without hesitation. "And I know she was important."

The doctor looks like he's about to ask another question, but Bucky takes charge of the conversation, turning to her.

"Why were you saying goodbye?" He's only curious at this point, but Darcy throws a panicked look at Steve. She'd forgotten all about her imminent departure.

"I-I'm leaving."

He stiffens. "When are you coming back?"

"It's okay Bucky," Steve cuts in. "If you want Darcy to stay, we can make that happen."

Darcy manages an internal wince. She knows Steve can go over Maria's head, but that will not help her relationship with her boss at all. Darcy needs to be an adult and go plead her case in person.

"I want Darcy to stay," Bucky confirms, relief coloring his voice.

"We can sort that out later," she says, letting Dr Adebayo take over the session again.

When the doctor is done, advising that Bucky gets plenty of rest for the time being, Darcy makes to follow him. Bucky has an arm around her hips before she can scoot off the cot.

"I thought you were staying?"

"I am—here, in the facility," she clarifies. "But I have things to sort out, and you need to rest. Like the doctor advised."

"I don't want to. When I close my eyes— _I don't want to_."

"Okay, okay." She runs a soothing hand up his arm. "You don't have to sleep just yet. You stay here with Steve, and I'll be back in a little while."

Natasha and Sam are on the other side of the door waiting for her. When it shuts behind her, Darcy casts a glance back through the one-way mirror, to where Bucky is staring forlornly.

"How?" she asks. "I don't get it."

"Google says it's a pretty uncommon scenario," Sam answers, "but it's not unheard of. The likelihood is the memory of him first meeting you is gone for good, but this one he'll never lose."

She contemplates that. It makes a kind of sense, the shock finally lifting and swelling into something she doesn't dare name as happiness. Not yet.

"That's good, I think. It means he'll never be Hydra's again." Of course, it's not a certainty, but could the world be _that_ cruel to them? She bites her lip. "What about his other memories?"

"All we can do is give it time."

"Maria's waiting for you in her office," Nat interrupts quietly.

"Ugh. Come on, let's go get this mess sorted out."

Darcy thanks Sam, and they head away from Bucky's room, to the wing where the offices lie. "Did you know?" Darcy asks Nat as they walk.

"I had an inkling, this morning. Before that, no. It was hard to even hazard a guess at the context of his words."

"So you thought you'd better check if your hunch was right?"

"Hey, don't be grumpy with me. I was only doing destiny's bidding."

"I suppose I can't exactly be ungrateful."

Ungrateful is the opposite of how she's feeling. She owes Nat everything—will probably be hunting for fancy Russian cake recipes to demonstrate her thanks. She'd offer it verbally, or with a hug, but "that touchy-feely stuff" makes Nat squirm.

Maria is surprisingly gracious about Darcy changing her mind, even before the concept of soulmates is brought up.

"I knew you were running away," she says, pulling out some pre-completed forms canceling the transfer. "I'm not exactly sorry you changed your mind; the last thing I need is a miserable assistant in my face all day."

"I understand that I can't work on his missions anymore—"

"Good. Don't worry, there's still plenty of work for you to do."

Darcy doesn't bother unpacking her stuff, grabbing some food and returning to Bucky's 'suite', as Nat has started calling it. He and Steve seem to carrying on a conversation, halting though it may be. Bucky's right behind Steve when Nat opens the door, crowding the space until Darcy is through, wrapping a hand around her wrist to guide her back to the cot.

"Maybe she wants to sit on the chair, Buck," Steve suggests, gesturing the one Dr Adebayo vacated.

"It's okay, Steve, I'll sit with Bucky," she replies, and sees Bucky swallow with relief.

This time she hops up and shuffles until her back hits the wall, her knees bent and feet flat on the mattress. Bucky follows suit, staying hip to hip with her. Steve picks up the conversation again, carefully going over their shared experiences.

Eventually, Darcy begins to grow tired. It's hard to keep track of time in a room with no windows, but her watch tells her it's late into the evening. She's anticipating Bucky's reaction this time.

"I have to go," she says, making no attempt to move. He grips her wrist again, nowhere near tight enough to hurt, and turns wide eyes on her. "Just for the night. I need to sleep."

"You can sleep here," he protests, and she can see Steve having an aneurysm out of the corner of her eye at the suggestion. Bucky's first recovery was characterized by night terrors and lashing out in his sleep, and she knows it's a bad idea to be in the middle of that. Besides, the cot is narrow and barely comfortable enough to sit on.

"I can't," she replies gently, "but I'll be back first thing in the morning. I can bring you breakfast, if you'd like."

His breathing is coming shallower, and she covers his hand with his own.

"Maybe they can give you something to help you sleep?" She raises a questioning eyebrow at Steve and he nods. "You don't have to take it, but it could help keep your mind quiet overnight."

Bucky agrees, placing his trust in her that anything he takes won't do anything but help him sleep. Darcy sits with him while Nat delivers the pill and a glass of water, then until it kicks in and he starts to drift off.

She's back, as she promised, with breakfast, and the days settle into a pattern of visits. She's there nearly all day at first, but soon drops back to see him around her work schedule, staying late into the evenings. Bucky's learned to trust Dr Adebayo, and the two other doctors who rotate duties, and they've already been through this process before so progress isn't as stilted as she expected. The theory about his memory's coming back more quickly this time proves true, though it's in an erratic order.

He remembers simple, seemingly odd things about her at first: the things she has in her living room, bringing her coffee, text message conversations. He remembers more about Steve, but they've forged new neural pathways to those memories before.

Sometimes he takes a sedative to sleep, sometimes he doesn't. On one of the nights he doesn't, she wakes in the small hours to find him curled around her in her bed.

It's the warmth of him that woke her, because his skin throws out so much heat, and she thinks her startled gasp might wake him too. Instead, he just nuzzles his nose into her neck, where his face is buried, tightening his grip on her waist. He seems pretty comfortable. And comatose.

She manages to get a text to Nat letting them know where he is, but nobody's realized he's missing yet. (An investigation later proves that he pulled the old stuffing-the-blankets-with-a-pillow-to-make-it-look-like-I'm-still-in-the-bed-trick and then escaped through the ceiling tiles in the bathroom. He admits that he's been drafting a mental map of the facility based on his memories and used that to find Darcy's quarters. Barton gets blamed for giving him the idea, despite his protests that he hasn't even seen Bucky since he came back). Then his soft breathing lulls her back to sleep in his arms.

The next day, following a hasty evaluation from the doctors, they agree Bucky can move back to his old quarters. It's either that or moving him back the Hulk-proof cell, and that seems a little drastic. Bucky agrees to sleep in his own bed, so he doesn't run the risk of hurting her during a nightmare.

What he doesn't promise to do is not seek her out following a nightmare. When she wakes up with him wrapped around her, she knows it's been a rough night.

She comes back from work one evening and suggests Chinese food. In hindsight, it wasn't the best idea. He only gets flashes, retreating inside himself as he remembers her rejection of him. She has to talk him through the whole sorry tale, so finally he can put the pieces together about why she was saying goodbye to him.

The next day, he's waiting for her, brighter than before. He's remembered more.

"I wasn't going to give up, you know. I was already planning to figure out how to prove that my soulmate didn't matter—that she was an old lady dying in a nursing home, or we'd meet on a mission and I'd never see her again. I was researching all these loopholes to show that I was going to be with you, and only you."

This time, when he asks to kiss her, she lets him. There are no tears this time, just heat and roaming hands.

"I love you," he says when she breaks away, chasing her mouth with his own.

"I love you too," she replies, without hesitation, and his smile is radiant enough to light the entire facility.

He asks to watch footage of their first meeting—the one _she_ remembers—but it doesn't trigger anything. She knew it wouldn't.

"I was pretty rude to you," he comments.

"Yeah, but you made up for it with coffee."

It takes time for him to decide whether he wants to return to active duty. Hydra have been quiet lately, but everyone knows it won't last forever. In the end, he agrees to missions that don't appear to be Hydra-related. The rest of the time, he focuses on getting the recruits trained. No one's a harder taskmaster than Bucky; she hears the grumbles when she drops by the main common room.

He insists on dating her, despite the fact that he has all the important memories involving the two of them back, even if he's hesitant about leaving the base. Instead, he picks her up from her quarters on a Friday evening and takes her for a private meal in the dining suite, or to a movie night in the on-site cinema Tony's had installed. It's after one of these dates—dancing to old records in the deserted Avengers' common room—that he spends the night in her bed for reasons that have nothing to do with nightmares. They wake the next morning, giddy and love-drunk. It's the weekend, and they don't leave her quarters again until Monday morning.

Despite this, he has some surprisingly old-fashioned ideas about the way their relationship is supposed to progress, as she discovers when she suggests he move into her quarters already.

"Definitely not!" he responds, genuinely shocked at the idea. "I can't live with a girl I'm not married to, even if she is my soulmate. My ma would haunt me for it."

The fact that he tells her this while they're pressed together in her bed amuses her.

"Bucky, you sleep here. You shower here. You devour the contents of my fridge and hog my sofa. You already do live here."

"Nah, I'm just here cos it's where you are. All my stuff is still in my quarters."

"So I'm imagining the half-a-rail of clothes in my closet?"

"I like it when you wear my things."

She should have realized he didn't intend to wait all that long before getting a ring on her finger anyway.

One morning her phone calendar chimes with a reminder she can't remember setting. When she opens it, still curled up in bed with Bucky snoring into her neck, it's a simple item, set the year before. _Transfer request_. One year to the day since she'd made the decision to leave the facility, to avoid heartbreak and look for happiness in other ways. It hadn't _exactly_ panned out how she hoped, but neither had she foreseen this: entwined with the very firm, muscular body of her supersoldier soulmate, their words a matching silver, the same color as the band on the diamond ring she wears. This is peace. This is happiness.

Maybe, finally, the universe is done laughing at her.

Thank you everyone from coming on this ride!

* * *

 **I hope the explanation makes sense. It wouldn't be completely unheard of (victims of amnesia, for example), although I don't think dementia sufferers would be affected by the same rule.**

 **I've already said I will write this from Bucky's POV as well - it won't be as in depth, but it should give some insight into what was happening in his head when Darcy was being frustrating and weird. I thought of the perfect title for it as I was drifting off to sleep the other night, and I didn't write it down because I would *definitely* remember it! (headdesk)**

 **I'm also open to prompts for outtakes if anybody is interested. Send them through my Tumblr (I'm the same name there as I am here).**


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